Alliance Rising

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Yes, sir.” A cheerful shrug. The Stream had, in its day, carried technical queries, scientific discoveries, pictures of newborn babies—chess matches and idle lovelorn chatter for lonely pusher-ships years out from station. Stream-techs handled autofeed, mostly, things prepared to be sent by various departments. He’d rarely been up here. The man minding the Stream-feed was, however, one of the old faces.

  He handed over the chip. It went into the slot and entered the Stream within a second or two.

  “Want a confirmation of send, sir?” As the tech handed the chip back.

  “Sure. Yes,” Abrezio said as casually as he could manage.

  And that was that. A lightspeed transmission would reach Atlantis, Santa Maria, and Sol in due course. Abrezio hoped, but could not verify, that it didn’t hit any other receiver out there in the dark, but if it did, if Pell had a receiver transmitter in place out there, it would still be too late. The button was pushed. The jump point coordinates, the supporting data—everything he had on the topic—was on its way to Sol at the speed of light, nothing slower; unfortunately no faster.

  A ship could outrace it. But had no way to get there.

  Unless—it had the coordinates.

  Chapter 9

  Section i

  The Strip was uncommonly quiet, just a feeling of tension running up and down. A lot of blue-coats. A lot of wolf-whistles, in a particular significance of mischief aimed at uniforms in general.

  Rosie’s was Galway turf, right near the Fortune, which was the sleepover Galway held. There were cousins, oh, ten or twelve of them, the only customers at this hour.

  “How was it?” Ashlan called out, Nav 2 on Fallan’s shift. “Hey, Fallan! You, on the medical restriction! Were you good or were you bad?”

  “I was,” Fallan said archly, “very, very good.”

  Laughter attended. “Come drink some breakfast! It’s one of those days! Rosie’s oven’s on the blink again and he’s serving toast and cold beer!”

  “Gotta stay sober,” Ross said. “We got a report to give.”

  “Damn straight you do!” another cousin said. “You were right in the middle of it.”

  “Not the ones that got the exposure,” Ashlan said impishly. “God, I’d have given money to be there.”

  “Not a single Galway in the crowd?” Fallan asked.

  “We didn’t hear about it until it was all over. We want first-run details!”

  “Well, I had my breakfast, but I’ll take a near-beer. Some guy who got sleep last night can get it.” Fallan dropped into a chair and Ross sat down by him.

  “You didn’t,” Ross said under his breath. “You swore you wouldn’t.”

  “Not so much,” Fallan said, likewise under his breath. “Mostly we talked. We filled in the gaps, hers and mine—some of the gaps. Interesting stuff. Want to sit for a bit. Tell you later.”

  “You know anything I don’t?”

  “Maybe.”

  The near-beer arrived. So did the dozen cousins and Rosie and the wait-staff, standing close.

  “Well, it’s pretty simple,” Fallan said. “The outsiders all lock up tight, and they don’t vacate, and they take the position customs can be escorted through the hold regarding goods proposed to be offloaded, but they don’t set foot elsewhere.”

  “So,” Mary T asked, “who’s going to say what-all is elsewhere?”

  “Long as it doesn’t exit the ship, is it Customs’ business? That’s the outsiders’ say on the matter.”

  “Does Pell go with that? Does the Beyond?”

  “Not sure they have a choice,” Fallan said. “And sounds like they don’t much give a damn, so long as their cargo moves. That’s the thing in contention. Even Alpha Customs skips inspections more often than not. They haven’t tried a one of these newcomers, until they decided to make a case of Finity, which just happens to be a working ship, as Rights isn’t, so—and they didn’t go to the hold. They hard-suited and grappled to a hatch up in the ring, of which Finity had certain suspicions.”

  “So the e-hatch story,” a cousin said, “is true.”

  “That’s exactly true. They got inside, but they were carryin’ cutters, cameras, and such, which Finity security didn’t highly appreciate. Finity security shut a section of corridor, told them if they used those cutters they were going to be highly unappreciated, and told them they could stay in that corridor until those suits became real uncomfortable, or until Finity left port, if they wanted to be permanent guests. Or they could shed the hardsuits and get searched, and then they could go out the nice mostly warm tube access to the personnel lifts and go free. The so-called ‘Customs’ boys decided they wanted out, so Finity let them shed the suits and come out and cooperate. And the howlin’ part is—one was Hewitt himself, as turns out, not that he was admittin’ who he was. But the cutters, the cameras, the data sticks, all that, with the hardsuits, Finity’s got. Hewitt and his boys was given souvenir towels, with Finity’s own logo, and they was let go to the lift, not a scratch on ’em. That’s Finity’s account of it, which I had direct, with pictures. They weren’t the ones who put them exiting the lift up on the schedule boards. I know that on a Finity captain’s word, which I believe. And Finity didn’t gather that crowd down at the terminal to embarrass the administration, either.”

  “Word is, that was purely local,” a cousin said.

  “Much as we love Customs, we so love Hewitt more.” That, from another cousin, with a mutter of laughter quickly dying as Niall and his brother captain, Owen, came in.

  “So what’s this?” Niall asked.

  Chapter 9 Section ii

  Fallan had to tell it over again, with Niall and Owen in the party, and Ross had a cup of strong tea and dry toast. His stomach was upset all the while, and finally, as he had a chance to catch Niall isolated at the door, he said, in shipspeak, “Jen, the girl I was with, Jen’s Finity Security. So you know.”

  “Did you know?”

  “She told me last night. Says Fallan’s Lisa Marie wouldn’t be walking around without security, and she’s it, at least the part I know about.”

  Niall leaned against the door frame, still inside, arms folded, “Well, makes sense. I’m not worried about it. Fallan and this woman, well, good for them, I think. He’ll say what he wants, but he’ll be listening, too. You get a good sense of this girl?”

  “She told me on her own. For what reason I don’t know. I like her. I think she likes me.”

  “Well, that’s the way of it, isn’t it, as should be. A tie with Finity’s no bad thing. They’re wanting to talk to me and Owen. And I know pretty well what the deal is—same as the Gallis and the Rodriguezes. And there’s a percentage in not signing, actually. I can talk to you. And you can talk to this girl.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So pass this word. I’m thinking about it. We’re doing all right as we are. There’s no percentage for us in changing that. I need more understanding how this actually works, how widespread it is—damned sure I don’t want to be signing onto something that’s going to leave us worse off than we were if it turns out, say, that they have a handful signed up and it turns out then to be something illegal or just politically upsetting to the wrong people.”

  “I know what you’re saying. Fal doesn’t think so.”

  “Get him. I want to talk to you two for a bit. My room.”

  “Finity would say, sir, don’t talk in rooms. They’re using equipment to tell when they’re being listened to, and to screen their whole area. Jen says they’ve got bugs in the bars, just about everywhere. Jen says if you want to talk, safest place is somewhere on the open Strip, face the wall and be sure they aren’t lipreading you.”

  Niall just looked at him. “That a fact?”

  “I know Jen’s said shush a couple of times, and we’ve moved. She’s got some way to know. I think it’s something she ca
rries.”

  “Some girl you’ve got.”

  “Why does admin need to bug the damn lavatories, is what I want to know. If it’s so. And Jen says it is. Back of bars, lavatories, restaurants, entertainment parlors. She says they don’t work all the time, but they can decide they want to listen to you. And the damn cameras are everywhere.”

  That was a longtime given, the cameras. And the occasional snoopery.

  “Go get Fal. See if we can find us a spot to talk.”

  “Yessir.”

  Chapter 9 Section iii

  The place impenetrable to bugs—they hoped—turned out to be the very tight confines of Rosie’s employee lavatory—theoretically immune to bugs mostly because unless the typical user talked to himself, there was little point in bugging a space barely big enough for one. Fallan was no heavyweight, neither was Niall, and Ross the same—the Monahan genes didn’t run to large people. So Ross squeezed in between the metal sink and the wall, Fallan sat, by the light of an overhead LED that barely lit the place. Niall’s back was to the door, and by the directional glow of the unmirrored LED, his face was all shadow, only his red hair catching the light.

  “So,” Niall said in Galway’s shipspeak, looking at Fallan and with a nod toward Ross, “his girl is what she is, yours is, well, what she is, and he thinks you’re all right being headlong trusting in the situation.”

  “Straight answer, I judge yes, if you mean what happened. They’re in the right.”

  “Side of the angels, eh?”

  “Swearing to it, cuz. Nobody got hurt. Nobody.”

  “General honesty?”

  “Stake my life on it.”

  “Stats. Have you heard them?”

  Fal nodded, and fished a data stick out of his pocket. “This.”

  That was the first Ross had heard of a stick being passed. It was the sort you could slip into a com and read, or listen to. Niall took it as if it were apt to catch fire, then took out his com and pushed it in.

  The com screen lit up. And it said—Niall held it, twisted round so they all could see the text.

  We ask the Monahans to join us in organizing a merchant alliance for mutual support and protection. We have signatures from a majority of ships operating between here and Mariner, a total of forty-nine of the sixty-three Families, since three more have signed here at Alpha. Meanwhile Estelle and Dublin are seeking signatures of the Families within their range of operations, including Cyteen and its colonies. We have four other ships we hope to contact between here and Pell. Our alliance is founded on ownership, sovereignty, and mutual financial support, effectively an insurance system. We will, by negotiation with the stations we serve, maintain the following principles: stations will trade and move commerce only by our ships. Every Family will govern what happens on its deck, and no station and no other Family will intrude onto the deck of a Family ship, nor withhold services to try to coerce a Family ship to surrender personnel or cargo. If a station operates in violation of the agreement, there will be no trade with that station, except in humanitarian emergency, until the infraction is resolved.

  Can we enforce this? We are preparing to do so, in the expectation that sooner or later, Sol will arrive with its own orders; or Pell will fall out with Cyteen; or vice versa. We are not willing to see stations make decisions that endanger our livelihoods and risk our lives.

  No ship of our alliance will go it alone. In principle, we also protect the stations: if a station has a viable population, it should be served. This is the responsibility that goes with the privilege we are demanding. We profit by having ports to serve.

  We are available for further discussion of the proposal. We will continue contact as we are doing and will accept messages by that means, but we also extend an invitation to the Monahans to visit any of our premises on Alpha, and to satisfy themselves as to the terms and applicability of the organization we represent. Signatory to this agreement:

  JR Neihart

  Xiao Min

  Sanjay Patel

  Asha Druv

  Giovanni Galli

  Diego Rodriguez

  Rahman Aki . . .

  The list went on to Families operating at Bryant’s, and Venture, to Pell, Viking, Mariner, and beyond.

  Niall drew a long, long breath, and Ross found a chill spreading through him, contact with the unheated wall and sink on either side of him, maybe, but the message was far wider than anything he had expected from the rumors floating the strip. The list of names included the Reillys and the Quens; it involved the Fasads, the Romneys, the Dales, Kriegers, Lukowskis, Joneses, Coskis, Olvigs, Gweris, Krejas and Beaumonts . . . names he’d heard in spacer tales, and seen written in the history of Glory and Alpha, but, God, it truly was a roll call of Families spread out as far as Cyteen.

  Niall popped the stick out and palmed it, passing it back to Fallan with the kill-it sign.

  Then nodded, solemnly, which said everything.

  Niall opened the door, and they extricated themselves into Rosie’s back kitchen storage, which had one dying LED that came on with movement. They went on through the kitchen, no different than many a longtime patron who knew the facilities in back were closer than the public lavatories six doors down.

  Never had used it for a critical conference, not in Ross’s memory, but that wasn’t saying it had never happened, in a station over-supplied with cameras and bugs. That all had come on when the actual Rights build had started up, when the first big pusher-load had arrived—

  When they’d gotten security-obsessed, and when the blue-coats had gone from a few grey-haired guards who’d tell you move along, the senior-seniors said, to young hard-noses armed with tasers, young toughs told it was their job to prevent angry talk. He hadn’t seen the change, but he began to think, with the incident that had knocked Fallan down, that it was worse than he remembered, all the way over to scary, counting where they’d been last night, and the disrespect of the blue-coats on the Strip since yesterday, blue-coats and Customs and pushy Rights crew all finding disfavor up and down, in subtle catcalls and whistles from people who didn’t seem to be looking.

  Admin hadn’t shut down the bars and shops. That was a step they could take. But fact was, the catcalls weren’t coming from the visitors, who weren’t highly visible on the Strip today—staying likely to their own bars and restaurants and such—but from isolated local crew, few in number. Workmen were out, with a ladder, or possibly they were plainclothes blue-coats: workmen were always suspect. Supposedly they were replacing a light.

  It was not a nice mood on the Strip today. Admin certainly wasn’t happy.

  They made a brief foray back to the hotel to change clothes and let the Monahan presence on the Strip fade a bit. It seemed a good idea. The more time that passed with nothing to attract particular notice, the better.

  Chapter 9 Section iv

  Tea with Andy Cruz, an executive meeting, Cruz with his subdirector, Black, and with Enzio Hewitt, Hewitt showing up in spit and polish, a uniform with too many unnecessary buttons, in Abrezio’s jaundiced estimation. Project Security, part of Earth Company Enforcement, the ECE, was supposedly subordinate to the ECSD, the Station Directorate, which was Abrezio’s office. Abrezio’s official appearance this afternoon was a business suit and a small collar pin, which damned well outranked the gold braid and the buttons.

  But then, they weren’t discussing fashion this afternoon. Wouldn’t even mention Hewitt’s lack thereof, in his appearance on every number two screen on the Strip, and the public appearance of three of his special operatives, whose appearance was now and forever known to every spacer on the Strip. They carefully weren’t mentioning state of dress this afternoon.

  Ames was there, carrying a computer linked to everything useful. Adima was there, head of Records. So was Systems Director Stacy Oldfield, a formidable woman with thirty years’ service in Ops, and no great fondness
for Rights’ intrusion into her list of priorities. She was politically canny. She didn’t express her distaste. She smiled winsomely, beaming like somebody’s grandmother, and managed to say to Hewitt, ever so innocently, “We have been asked to make arrangements to recover four hardsuits and a pusher. Do I understand correctly Enforcement would like Ops to handle that operation?”

  “We have other problems.” Hewitt turned sharply and walked off to join Cruz on the other side of the large table.

  Oldfield smiled benignly, and Abrezio thought to himself that it would be a cold day in hell when an alterday department head honored another unusual request from any arm of the ECE. The one that had complied—Maclean claimed a subordinate had supplied uniforms supposedly for an undercover operation on the Strip; and a construction foreman had given way to Hewitt’s rank. It had gone as it had because the request had come on alterday, when higher supervisors had been offshift, an oversight that wouldn’t happen again, not in any branch of Ops, including construction: Abrezio had ordered reference to mainday authority—his office—for anything involving operations on B-mast.

  The easy, forgiving way stationers had gotten along for hundreds of years was not going to survive Cruz and his programs, Abrezio had realized that long since, and this current situation had brought those differences into full, unforgiving light. In the early days of the Rights project, they’d made rules, they’d tried to foresee problems, and the increase in enforcement for the security of the project had employed a goodly number of young people—which had been a good thing . . .

  In the eyes of the citizens, Rights gave them good jobs and put them back on the map, so to speak. It was proof that the EC still had plans for them. There was hardship, but there was hope.

  The Strip was a dicier piece of politics, but he’d managed over the years to keep peace with the Strip and its shifting denizens, even if alcohol and anger got out of hand now and again. But the Strip had its own rough humor, which had come, last night, at direct odds with both Customs and project Enforcement. Well that the result was humor, and that it had found an outlet, no matter that his administration had suffered embarrassment, no matter that the ECE’s morale had taken a serious hit. Worse could have ensued.