Alliance Rising

by C. J. Cherryh

  Jen held his hand and, her head on his shoulder, told him a story, about her, about Pell docks, about construction at Venture.

  Which Galway might see again someday. That was a cheerful thought. Maybe they would even call at Pell, if they came out of this financially able.

  Ring-dock. So vast and so high there was actually weather up around the lights, Jen said. Clouds formed, and it rained. It might be pipe condensation, but rain was something that happened on planets, and yet there was more rain of a different kind in a project Pell was undertaking—rain coming down on plants, a hydroponics lab that was set to produce food that had nothing to do with yeast tanks and fish farms and Downbelow plants that had to be processed. Green things. Earth things. Seeds that had slept for centuries.

  There were young trees growing there. “No taller than I am,” Jen said, “but they’re set up and braced so they can grow the way they do on Earth.”

  “For real?”

  “Well, trees grow in pusher-time. They’re time-stretched, like us, sort of. Naturally.”

  “That’s kind of crazy.”

  “It’s what the keepers say. I’m hoping to see if they’ve grown any while I’ve been away. Someday you’ve got to get to Pell.”

  “Don’t know as they want us,” he said.

  “Or Venture. We’re at Venture from time to time.”

  “You’ll drop messages.”

  “I promise. So you have to. Messages in a bottle.”

  “What bottle?”

  “It’s an old story. People would put messages in bottles and toss them into Earth’s oceans. And the oceans have a lot of currents that push and shove, and the bottles would travel, and people would find them clear around the planet from where they started. Messages in bottles. I’ll leave something for you every place I touch.”

  Ships picked up such messages in their black boxes, spat them out everywhere they docked.

  “So you have to leave things for me. So I know where you are. Let’s don’t take as long as Fallan and the Fourth to find each other.”

  “All right. Deal.”

  The noise level was getting deafening. Somebody had put on loud music and everybody was overtalking it. They tried to talk, but he half-shouted the last word, near as she was.

  “This is crazy,” he said then.

  “Want to go somewhere?”

  “Can’t. I’m under orders—stay at Rosie’s, stay together.”

  “Is it always like this?”

  “Never seen so many people show up.” A second’s afterthought. “There’ve never been this many people on the Strip. I think the blue-coats are probably afraid to come in here tonight. But I think we’ve fractured all the safety codes.”

  “Captains can move us. We’re behaving. No problem.”

  That was true. For that matter, if Rosie himself said move, the locals wouldn’t argue. So they stayed and drank, kept a pleasant buzz going. Jen asked him about Glory. He asked her about Viking and Mariner and what she knew about Cyteen.

  Twenty-three hundred hours and Niall stood up, called for attention with Rosie’s help—a mug thumped on the bar finally lowered the noise level.

  “Twenty-three hundred,” Niall called out, “and we’ve haven’t quite drunk Rosie’s dry—”

  “We’re out of ale,” Rosie shouted from the bar, “and we’re about out of rum!”

  “Well, then,” Niall called above the whistles and thumps, “let’s hear it for Rosie, who’s a good friend to Galway, and let’s let the man go home to his wife and kids. Wish us well, all, new mates and old, and we thank you mightily for coming! Turn in the mugs and stack the chairs, friends! Let’s leave Rosie an easy cleanup!”

  “Well, that’s a nice custom,” Jen said as they got up.

  “Doesn’t leave a mate sleeping in a corner,” Ross said cheerfully. “And it helps the bar staff.” He freed his chair from its track and upended it on the tabletop, set the clamp to hold it in place. “Get those mugs, would you, Jen? Those go to the bar.” He fished a scrip out of his jacket pocket—he’d put the right denomination into his pocket before the evening started. “Lay that on the counter, will you?”

  She took the mugs and the scrip up while he stacked the other two chairs. Family took the incapacitated in hand, and with a good deal of shouting back and forth and well-wishes to Galway, everybody began to leave.

  “I know I shouldn’t tempt you,” Jen said as they stood in the clearing room. “So I won’t.”

  “You do,” Ross said. “But I can’t. Got to join my own, now.”

  She put her arms about his neck, locked her hands behind his head, looking up at him. “You take care. You take good care, Ross Monahan.”

  He gave her a lingering kiss, and a second, and it really was time to go. Fallan and Lisa Marie were standing amid the tables and upended chairs, holding hands, still talking.

  “You take care, too,” he said. And: “Cousins are off. Got to haul Fallan away.”

  Last kiss. Quick and light. The ship called. And he had to go.

  Chapter 13

  Section i

  Jen came trailing in, almost last, downcast, hands in jacket pockets, with none of her usual energy.

  “Jen,” JR said. He’d waited to intercept her—not surprised she came among the last.

  And he was not unsympathetic for the mood, either. Merchanters left places and people. It was the way of things, and partings were ordinary—you’d see a person again, or you might never. Or it might be decades, like Mum and Galway’s Nav 1.

  But it was a crazy plan the Monahans were embarking on, risky beyond ordinary good sense, and even Mum’s rock-steady philosophy wasn’t handling the leave-taking as matter-of-course. A crazy plan, a move that no Family ship would undertake, except here, at the stretched edge of EC threat, with a station estranged from most other stations, a station out of resources, with a power struggle in full swing, and a ship and Family heavily invested in the outcome. It was a different mindset here. Of all ships that should be capable of breaking out of the downward spiral, Galway might—and still she wouldn’t relinquish her station attachments. Family ships wealthier, less desperate, would leave the place. But Galway was deeply invested here. And saw Alpha as their best hope.

  Maybe it was Atlas’s influence, the old pusher connection. The smaller pushers, locked to a single route—a pair of stations. Venture had built the Monahans a ship that had, twenty, thirty years ago, the potential to leave the Alpha trade, but they’d been sure of Alpha, they’d been invested in Alpha, and they’d gone back to Alpha’s service, not foreseeing (who could have?) Sol’s decision to divert resources to Rights of Man, mad as that was.

  Now Alpha rewarded them with this run. If that was the right word for it.

  JR gave a nod to Jen, signifying down the hall, to his quarters, and Jen came. JR walked in, went to the desk, flipped the switch that turned on their equipment that apparently did exceed the ability of Alpha to listen in.

  “What’s your sense of it?” he asked Jen, taking his habitual chair.

  Jen sat down, hands clamped on the chair arms. “They’re set on the glory of it. And the profit. And most of all—damn it.” Jen’s voice shook. “They’re damn fools. They love the Strip. They love the stationers. They love their lives back and forth to three damn stations.”

  “Is that the case with young Ross?” he asked. He didn’t think so.

  “Hard to say. He’s curious about the Beyond . . . real curious. But he loves the old man, really loves him, and the old man’s lived his life here. He isn’t ready to lay it down. Seems the captain’s got this notion the Hinder Stars are where we came from, that the Hinder Stars can civilize Sol, the history’s written here, and Sol will finally read it.”

  “Young Ross said that?”

  Jen shook her head. “Mary T did. Longscan, who’s going. She�
�s the senior captain’s half-sister. I don’t know who’s the source and who’s the influence. Fallan—Fallan says he’s always wanted to see Sol. Old Atlas never went there. And they’re all saying they’ll be famous. Is that a reason?”

  It was a question. “Finity already is famous. Finity’s End sheds that on all of us, and we benefit enormously from her reputation. We behave with a sense of obligation to that. So I don’t begrudge Galway her moment, her chance to make the name something to respect. And to make Alpha something again. That’s not just a word. That’s power. And better Alpha have enough of it to keep Sol at bay.”

  “And then become just as much trouble as Sol could be.”

  There were things not in Jen’s need-to-know. And they were getting into that territory. But the edge of it—yes. She should know. And understand the why of things that otherwise might divert her attention.

  “Sol’s already trouble. They sent Cruz. They didn’t build Rights as a merchanter. She’s differently configured. To move people. And when Sol does get here under their own power, they’ll have navigators and technicians that may work out the problems with Rights. On that day, the day Rights leaves this system, more than Alpha may have a problem.”

  “You’re saying—”

  “As a merchanter, it’s real short of cargo room—for its size. For transporting EC personnel, however . . .”

  Jen’s brow furrowed. “Police?”

  “EC policy, EC rules, EC enforcement. Pell threw them out, Venture ignores them, but they’re more evident at Bryant’s. Glory has a few, I hear. Alpha has over seven hundred of them, best number I have. It’s employing them to do repairs and carry supply, but their training is in tasers and self-defense. And that ship is capable of moving out several hundred of them at a go. That is upsetting. It’s a long time since we’ve even considered anything like an armed force. We worry about it, in the context of Pell and Cyteen, but so far nobody’s made a move of that sort. Rights is a point of irritation—a problem that’s been under perpetual construction, that’s created other problems, but as for what it’s intended to be and what it may be, once they work the kinks out—it’s not a remote problem. My own opinion is that if Abrezio loses control—if Cruz becomes the style of governance on Alpha, we’ll have that ship to deal with. And maybe its cousins, coming in on Galway’s trail. Niall Monahan thinks he can lead Sol and Alpha down a different course, if Abrezio stays in power. He’s offering to stall it long enough for us—but we’ve agreed to help Abrezio out, amid our other concerns. We can get him supply he needs, better situation here. Quietly. We don’t want to create an impression he has Pell backing; but the impression he has connections—would not be a bad thing. And we just hope Galway does everything she hopes to do and your young man comes back to Alpha in good form.”

  “He’s not my young man.”

  “Isn’t he?”

  Jen frowned. Decidedly. “I don’t want a case made of it. It’s hard enough. He doesn’t have to go. He’s only a trainee.”

  “But he wants to, I take it.”

  “He’s going with Fallan. I imagine Mum is upset, too.”

  “You’d be right. There are some you don’t forget.”

  A silence. “This is one.”

  “Wishing you the best, Jenniebug.”

  She’d been missing two front teeth and had her hair in pigtails when she’d worn that name. Her eyes watered. The tears didn’t spill. “Yeah,” she said. And got up and hugged him. “You and all of us. Captain, sir.”

  “Go to bed,” he said. “Better sooner than later. You’re excused to hit the bar on this one. Just this once. You have jobs to do tomorrow, one of which will be to show up, say goodbye, and not to embarrass anybody. Then we’ve got the Monahans to see to, who’re going to be as upset, and they have everything at stake. So go. Don’t get hung over. And make morning call dry-eyed and sober.”

  “Yessir,” she said, and patted his shoulder and walked out, straight and proper.

  The next generation, she and Ross Monahan. He had to wonder . . . what would happen to them, to the way of life the Alliance sought to protect. Was it too little, too late?

  Defense was something people talked about in the Beyond—the Beta Incident still influenced decisions in places of power. Military wasn’t a forgotten word, but it was a word from history, not current events, right along with war, and border and country, not applicable. There were the routes, the solar systems, the planets, but territory was flexible, the only sure thing, the exterior of a station or a planet’s atmosphere. Everything moved at velocities and on vectors that had to be known and figured for, but a border? Where, precisely, was that? And none of those stations, none of the planets, could truly exist on their own. One station’s excess was another station’s need, right up the chain of supply, their very existence dependent on their ties with merchanters, the willingness of merchanters to visit that port.

  The alliance they were forming was dangerously new and untested. They hadn’t trusted the Alpha merchanters enough yet to tell them all of it, but what Niall Monahan proposed to do was exactly what the core of the alliance was preparing to do, should the stations challenge their charter—go invisible, go silent, and wait. There were places in the dark where they were building up supply, places that would signal back if you flashed the right signal. He’d talked about teeth in the agreements; and there were teeth—the ability to stop trade. To embargo.

  But with Sol’s arrival imminent, with the likelihood that Sol would arrive with its own ships in multiple, not Family nor anything approximating it—there would be a challenge. If those ships arrived to carry blue-coats, they were one kind of problem . . . primarily to the stations. If they arrived cargo-based, they were another . . . to the merchanters.

  And it was a serious question exactly what Sol was going to send.

  If it was a science and exploratory mission, to establish links to Alpha—good. In that scenario, Alpha gained importance as a crossover point, a transition between Sol’s way and everybody else’s. They could deal with that and even welcome it—if it signaled a new attitude and a willingness to listen. Unfortunately, no one really believed that would happen. There had never been a period of non-contact: there’d been lag in their communications, with Sol always half a decade or more out of date on its information. Sol knew there was a network of stations, they knew there was trade, they knew human beings had spread out and multiplied—as Sol had spread through its own solar system and established commercial and scientific enterprises.

  They knew at least that much. They knew how it worked . . . and had still ordered a massive and economically ruinous ship-build at Alpha, a ship designed to carry people, and sending personnel to take charge of the enforcement arm of Alpha’s Earth Company offices—sending Cruz, in fact, as well as a fair number of young, at the time, ECE recruits.

  Was Cruz a wild card, gone far off Sol’s instructions? Somehow, he doubted it. Sol had completely changed the nature of the pusher-loads that had used to keep Alpha comfortable. Everything was the ship-build. The station suffered, but there were jobs in the build; and jobs in the ranks of the blue-coats—jobs that earned station credit . . . but with nowhere to spend it. Trade suffered, and Bryant’s became much more closely linked, commercially, with Venture and Pell: they’d seen it as they came down the string that led here. One ship from Alpha currently at Bryant’s and no further, by the schedule boards; nothing from Bryant’s coming here currently, four ships stalled here, one in disrepair, three on hold because the presence of four Beyonder ships scared the locals . . . there’d been a lot wrong here when they’d come in. There’d been no reason Santiago and Qarib and Galway couldn’t undock and go—but all processes had frozen. Santiago was half-loaded. Qarib was awaiting fueling. Firenze wasn’t fit to move. Galway was ready to go—but had sat under hold.

  Was it Abrezio who had held them fast? Or had Cruz? Or was it the unease of
the whole station, the stationer population that stayed well out of view?

  It was Abrezio who had sent the coordinates on to Sol—independent of Cruz. A last ditch attempt, perhaps, to win out over the EC’s golden boy.

  A lot was going on here. A lot would go on when Sol made its appearance here. And given all evidence they’d seen in Cruz and in Hewitt—it wasn’t going to be a science mission. It was going to be an arm of the corporation that had issued orders and demanded compliance and accounting, and that viewed itself as the center of human civilization, making decisions for the star stations because they were, well, Earth.

  And their notions of ownership and rule were going to come smack up against stations and merchanters who had been making their own decisions out here for centuries because they were, well, separate. And liked it that way.

  One of the biggest risks in Sol’s intervention was the tendency of Sol to issue orders before it really had a thorough understanding of what it was dealing with. Some committee on Sol Station met and voted, and there they were. There they would be, once the time-lag was down under a year. Bringing Sol real-time with human affairs was assuming that Sol would accept advice.

  God. It was going to be a mess.

  Tomorrow . . .

  He’d given his orders. He wanted to get moving again, leave Alpha and carry what they now knew to Pell and beyond.

  But they had to delay to deal with whatever fell out with Abrezio and Cruz—not a happy prospect, once the news broke; and they were obliged to take care of the Monahans left on the Strip, which—God knew—was going to be messy.

  He’d distributed problems to the other captains, John, Madison, and Mum—Madison was going to be near the mast-entry to assure there was no difficulty; John was going to be at Rosie’s tomorrow after Galway launched; and Mum was going to troubleshoot whatever came up.

  Himself, he was going to be at Critical Mass, where people could find him at need.