Alliance Rising

by C. J. Cherryh

  Squeeze of his arm. Fingers tangled with his. “Sure.”

  Chapter 10 Section ii

  Jen was back. JR noted that. Back from a short trip out of Finity’s close territory, near to Galway’s, and now bringing Galway’s Nav 1.3 back with her, straight to her room.

  That wasn’t part of any plan. Mum and Fallan Monahan were the main channel of communication, Galway’s senior captain having ducked invitations to talk, for whatever reason, and if Jen had new information, if she thought she was in pursuit of something critical, she could signal. Right now Jen seemed to be engaged in something not so critical, and what shook out of that, well, Jen was due some private time, and the message to Niall Monahan had now gone out by different means. Mum had said she expected Fallan to come back, and Mum, while not delivering details to the curious, had had, she said, a very nice visit, and yes, Fallan Monahan was very special. She’d returned with a rare little treasure, a unique gift—it had passed scan this morning—that summed up a relationship that was what it was: old, not blind, and very special.

  It was Fallan who carried the message to his senior captain. And by now, all those blue-coats posted about had probably reported contact at crew level between Finity and Galway and put two and two together. Presumably admin was watching, trying to figure whether Finity was on the level and trying to decide whether to try to enforce its rules.

  JR didn’t think they would. There’d been no message from admin, no see-me, and no protest at any high level. Investigation hadn’t figured out who’d posted the notorious picture onto the schedule board, and it hadn’t stopped it circulating on com, which was reportedly creating a little stir now in residential sections.

  Rumor from the shops and bars said that residents were a little upset that Customs had provoked an incident with their visitors, that the general feeling was that it had been a stupid move, that their big ship couldn’t move and Finity could, and that Finity was signing up their ships to some sort of organization and they were, yes, generally worried.

  Here at Alpha, the wall between the ships and the station residents was fairly impenetrable except through the residents in direct contact with the Strip, the waiters and shopkeepers and bartenders who dealt with them directly, and the order of the hour was to talk freely, answer questions, deliver reassurances, and above all indicate that Finity wasn’t planning any action against the station, not in the deal with the ships and not in response to the boarding attempt. That it was ready and willing to return the hardsuits and the pusher if some agency would just step up and find a way to collect them.

  Apparently Customs didn’t want to do it, because they were officially disengaged from the problem and no official wanted to go on record to reclaim the items. And Maintenance and Safety didn’t want to go ask for them because they weren’t the ones who’d left them up there. That left Enforcement, apparently, who didn’t have orders to do it, because, well, they had no orders.

  The denial of responsibility was interesting. Nobody had done it. Nobody had ordered it. Nobody was responsible at any lower level, and they weren’t touching it even with gloves on. Sooner or later somebody would have to own up and do it, or Finity was going to have to cast the pusher loose with all the gear aboard it, and let Maintenance and Safety chase it down before it hit something.

  JR hadn’t ordered that, no matter he’d given station a deadline for the removal. So far as he was concerned, he was prepared to wait until undock—or for an official appeal from some agency. As yet they didn’t have it.

  Station residents did seem to be confused. Some were upset about the picture. Others were apparently trading it about on their personal coms and laughing about it.

  The situation didn’t seem to be leading to another try by Customs. And one person was said to be particularly upset—Vice-Adm. Andrew J. Cruz. No one had directly said that Cruz was behind the move to get aboard Finity, but his chief of security being one of the boarding crew left little room for deniability. Never mind the objects being held for return included high-level credentials, tools, weapons, data sticks, and enforcement badges, all official.

  JR wondered if they thought they’d have just proceeded to push buttons and throw switches as they pleased and that a watch on duty in the lower corridor wouldn’t have noticed.

  Trying to download or upload to the systems would have certainly led nowhere good—just wandering about would have led nowhere good in fairly short order. It was not a pushbutton start on Finity’s systems. The immediate universe still had free access via the e-hatches, four in number, so that any personnel near the ship could find a safe haven from, say, a stellar hiccup. But if you wandered off on a tour and couldn’t satisfy Finity’s cyber watchdog that you belonged where you were, Finity could get very uncooperative.

  And if Finity watchcrew had had to call a captain to extricate some of Rights’ technicians from Finity’s righteous wrath, it would have taken Alpha’s lawyers all day to extricate them from his.

  He had nothing personally against Andrew Cruz. Yet. Hewitt was a little further down the well.

  The fact they both were Sol-born EC and thought that the Company’s whim trumped centuries-old understandings wasn’t surprising . . . historically-speaking . . . but it did imply a certain . . . narrow-mindedness and, yes, stupidity. He’d never personally met anybody from Sol, but he’d have thought long dealing with the immense distances involved would have adjusted Sol’s expectations. Sol early on had issued decrees and made demands as if they could be any use at all six to ten years on . . . but the expectation that laws made out here should govern them? Clearly that hadn’t gotten through to them. Witness the expectation that had built that ship up on A-mast and nearly ruined the only station willing to support it.

  Would they be better if FTL knit Sol up much closer to them? The exotic trade would be a decided benefit, especially to these struggling Alpha-based merchanters, but Sol was immensely populous, numbering in the billions, and consisted of a hundred governments thinking they could decide what people who lived lightyears away, under circumstances they couldn’t begin to imagine, should do.

  The fact that Andrew Cruz had decided to ignore custom, tradition, and law suggested that what the EC had consistently done, the EC was still doing—still claiming right of ownership over every station and ship in space. The EC had appointed a man who thought it not only a good idea, but morally right to try to bring a force into a visiting ship by exploiting a centuries-old safety measure—

  Said it all, that did. And he didn’t believe the station-born EC Director, Abrezio, had had anything to do with it.

  It was worth noting that the persons who had put up the scandalous picture were rumored to be station residents, and that one version in circulation had put Cruz’s face on all four of the towel-clad agents.

  JR personally wished the picture had never happened. It didn’t make their mission easier.

  But the decision to invade a ship? Not their decision.

  The actions that had made Cruz less than popular on station? Not their actions.

  He had sent a message to Abrezio.

  We deeply regret the confrontation. Our security procedures require a thorough inspection of the equipment brought aboard our ship. The request for release of the agents took precedence. The fact that there was a security breach in the mast lift lobby is regrettable, and the posting of a picture on the schedule boards was emphatically not our doing.

  The fact that some of Min’s crew had been in the crowd was regrettable, too, and Old Man Jun, Min’s father, had issued a stern reprimand regarding the rowdiness.

  Giovanna Galli, however, had her own issues with Customs, and with Rights, and what she did was Giovanna’s decision.

  We have now removed all data and image recording devices from the gear confiscated, and we stand ready to set it outside our access if someone responsible will come to the access and request it.

&n
bsp; Probably Abrezio would love to send Cruz, but there was no likelihood Cruz would undertake it. Probably some innocent fellows from Maintenance and Safety would have to go up there and figuratively knock on the door.

  We hope that this will close the issue. We have no desire to carry the matter further.

  [Signed] JR Neihart, Senior Captain, Finity’s End, Pell Registry.

  Chapter 10 Section iii

  There was one more step to take. And Abrezio hadn’t slept well. He couldn’t hide that part.

  “Is something wrong?” his wife asked, finding him in the kitchen far, far too early.

  He didn’t share everything. Couldn’t. Shouldn’t. Two of them worried as hell weren’t going to improve the situation. He shrugged, poured a second cup of tea, and didn’t quite look at her.

  “Is it bad?”

  “Not necessarily,” he said. “Potentially it’s good.”

  “Then why do you look like hell?”

  “Worry that it won’t be. But,” he said, then paused. Callie always steadied him. Her voice brought simple sanity to what was otherwise chaos. And he felt guilty for not having told her what he’d already done. But it couldn’t make her happier. That was his reasoning. And it would put a shadow in her eyes, so that friends might wonder. Carrying a deep secret, he’d observed, left such shadows. He had them. Callie put up with his silences patiently, not continuing past a question. And it would be selfish to shift the greatest burden of his career onto her shoulders, even part of it.

  “But?”

  He shook his head. And lied by changing the subject. “Just trying to mop up the picture mess. And hoping to see these visitors pull out soon—them and their insurance notions. They are paying. They’ve cleared Firenze’s debt, at regular exchange rates in materials we very desperately need, Firenze’s in the black, and it’s good. They’ve pronounced her navigation system too antiquated to try to fix, and they’ve got some unified system they’re ordering in from Venture, with technicians. That message will go out when Finity goes, with the others, we hope, while the Gallis sit and wait. It may take as much as a year to implement, and they’ll apparently have that bill paid, likewise.”

  “So that’s good, isn’t it?”

  Callie could sound so happy, when things weren’t, necessarily.

  “Well, it’s good for our bottom line and it’s good for the Gallis, granted it all materializes. And the Gallis will understandably be grateful to whoever made it possible. We hope they then stay an Alpha ship.”

  A frown. “You think these visitors are trying to change that?”

  “It seems logical to me that loyalty’s going to go where the support is. And for a large reason hanging over A-mast, we can’t provide that to our ships. I can’t see a Pell-based ship pouring funds into an Alpha-based ship for no reason but beneficence.”

  “But they can’t control them, either. The Gallis, I mean.”

  He drew a deep breath. “No. That’s true.”

  “The Gallis belong here. I think maybe—what we should do—is invite some of these people socially.”

  Shocking thought. “Dear, you haven’t met Giovanna Galli.”

  “Perhaps it’s time I did. Maybe not here, if that would make her uncomfortable, but we could hold an event at one of the nice Strip restaurants. Not to talk business, but just mingle. Get to know each other.” Her bright smile flashed at him. “I think I’d like that. I’m quite enthused.”

  That—was actually a concept. “Now is not a good time, but after we do shed the visitors, when we have just ours left . . .” Status. Prestige. Of all times in his career, he couldn’t be seen to lessen his—with Sol looming on the horizon. “Maybe more intimate get-togethers. Maybe some sponsored events. For the senior captains, maybe. It’s not at all a bad concept. Just the administrative office. Ourselves, the Oldfields.” There was another problem in her notion. “You’ve never spent an evening on the Strip.”

  “I’ve hardly ever gone there.”

  “Well, it’s gotten no tamer. And lately much more pressured.”

  “But that will go away fairly soon.”

  “That will go away.” He stood up and gave her a gentle hug. “I’m going in to the office.”

  “You don’t want breakfast?”

  “I’ll have much more appetite for lunch, I’m sure. I’ll meet you then.” Callie spent her days in an office at the Industry and Materials Board, which had sensible hours, and a regular lunch. “Noon at the Country Kitchen.”

  “I’ll be there.” She gave him a light kiss. “Noon. I’m sure it will all work out, whatever it is.”

  “Do my best,” he said, and left the kitchen, picked up his coat where he had left it last night far too late, and headed out to the office, through a lift system mostly delivering alterday staff home to a deserved good night’s sleep. His code guaranteed a private lift car: he had no trouble getting one, and used the brief transit time to put a message into system for Captain Niall Monahan.

  See me soonest.

  That would probably hit before Monahan got up, but that was all right. He could use the time just to sit in the familiar confines of his office and put his thoughts together, which he’d tried, with mixed success, to do last night.

  His world had changed yesterday. Ever since he’d taken this office, decisions made had had consequences that lay somewhere in the distant future, that time when Sol’s appointed representatives arrived on his doorstep and began demanding an accounting of his time in office.

  Yesterday . . . from the moment he sent that message down the Stream . . . he’d set a new timeline in motion. A timeline now with consequences as near as twelve years from now, message out, message back; or sooner, if Sol had a ship ready and wanted to risk it.

  Whatever resulted, Andrew Cruz . . . had become a distinct problem.

  There was a word in ship-speak that Qaribs used to describe Cruz, untranslatable, they said. But vindictive seemed apt. He’d never really appreciated it until now. He’d thought a lot about that word last night. He’d remembered an allegation, upon the ill-fated Bryant’s run with Rights crew and Hewitt aboard, that Qarib was carrying banned substances, difficult to prove or disprove. Customs had been involved. Qarib had appealed to him, he’d shelved the matter and personally cleared Qarib to move with no stain on the record.

  Customs. Again.

  God knew what attitudes Cruz had held before he left Sol, or how his notions had fermented during a decade of close contact with a pusher-crew—admittedly their own odd brand of humanity—but without question Cruz had come onto Alpha with an exaggerated idea of what he was meant to control and what ought to happen quickly.

  Over the years Cruz had gone from assuming he would have Rights running before the next pusher arrived, to the realization that, after twenty years, Rights wasn’t working, and he had no idea why. Sol . . . was not going to be happy, because Sol had this notion that a big ship was a big card to hold, and Sol’s authorities believed they’d dealt their boy Cruz unbeatable cards from a stacked deck.

  Thinking back, Rights’ aborted run had not been the turning point. The turning point had been when Hewitt and a handful of his finest had boarded Qarib for that run, and come out of it alive, but without that signed document attesting to their competency. Worse, they’d come out of it with rumors on the Strip involving the words ‘actions endangering the ship,’ which was just about as damning an accusation as Qarib could have issued. Hewitt had been furious. Cruz had been much colder and calmer in his reaction. And Qarib had been passed over for EC cargo.

  Vindictive.

  He’d recognized that about the man, on a small scale, and done his best to mitigate the problem, but the balance had shifted in the last forty-eight hours. The exchanges between Cruz and Finity’s End had escalated matters. Cruz had found a new focus for his anger and frustration, a much bigger target . . . and h
e was scaling his actions accordingly. Finity’s End would leave, eventually, but Cruz’s sense of entitlement wasn’t going anywhere. And for Cruz to watch his one real chance of saving Rights leave without giving up its secrets? That disappointment . . . was going to have consequences.

  He’d fired off an irretrievable message that was going to bring Sol here possibly in less than a decade, if the data worked. Benjamin Abrezio was going to be the man that had sent the data. Solo. No credit to Cruz at all. With luck, he could keep that transmission and what it held secret until Sol just . . . showed up. If not . . . he was going to spend some very unpleasant years as the primary target for that vindictive streak.

  What he didn’t know, was what allies Cruz, who had started his voyage as a bright young man, might have had in the central office back on Sol Station, and whether any of those remained. He doubted anyone had ever thought the project would take as long as it had. Cruz was ambitious as well as vindictive, and whatever committee had appointed him and ordered that damnable ship built—had an objective for it and had their own agendas to protect. But Hewitt was the newer appointee. Those who had sent Cruz out might even have aged and retired, while Hewitt’s patrons were still in office.

  Everything he’d done was assuming Sol had been building ships all this time, hopefully small, standard FTL ships based on solid, proven tech. Another like Rights would do them little good . . . unless their engineers were better than Alpha’s. If they had those ships, if they had probes, if those numbers were good . . . if all those ifs were true, Sol could be here within a decade. And when Sol showed up, suddenly operating on an FTL time-scale—and discovered that all Cruz had to show them was a ship that couldn’t do what it needed to do—Hewitt would be ever so eager to demonstrate Cruz’s shortcomings. Just as Cruz would want to sabotage Hewitt.

  But he himself was, like Cruz’s backers, not getting any younger. He had responsibilities. Callie was one. He’d fight, for her. And he had made his move to settle the business and not leave Callie the legacy of a problem that had eaten up half his career.