Finity's End - a Union-Alliance Novel (47 page)

"I want to think so," Fletcher said. It was, at least in that ideal world of these few moments' duration, the truth. Then, because the ensuing silence grew uncomfortable: "Are they going to open rec, do you think, or not?"

"I think we're supposed to sit in quarters. At least until they give us a clear. I'll lend you my tapes."

Fletcher got up and walked the six steps the cabin allowed before he fetched up in front of the mirrored sink alcove. He saw Jeremy standing, too, watching him with a distressed look on his face.

"Cards," he said to Jeremy, foreseeing otherwise Jeremy worrying at the matter and himself pacing twelve steps up and back, up and back, for a long, long number of hours. It was a situation Jeremy knew how to endure, this being pent in quarters. He imagined the rule in force at other chancy moments, on
Finity's
exits into lonely star systems, and the too-wise twelve-year-old with nothing and no one to confide in.

Don't leave
. He remembered Jeremy pleading with him, in a way that, maybe hearing it when he was tranked, the way it did with tape-drugs, had settled into his consciousness with peculiar force. He'd had borrowed brothers all his life. He'd never had a foster brother as desperate, as lonely as Jeremy. There'd never been a rivalry between them. Now—he began to see Jeremy adopting
his
trick of leaving the coveralls collar undone, his trick of how he did a hitch in the belt—

Even the cuff turn-up. The obsession, when they'd been on liberty, with finding a sweater, a
brown
sweater, like his. God, it was laughable.

And enough to grab his heart, when he looked at the kid's face, the eyes that searched his for every hint of advice, and, having just evoked it and brought it into the open, how did he ignore it?

He didn't know how he felt now. Trapped, yes.

And at the same time gifted with something he'd never had, and now couldn't walk away from… no more than Melody had walked away from a lost boy that day on Pell docks.

Voyager lay ahead, a spark against a starry dark, swinging in orbit about a stony almost-planet itself orbiting a smallish star.

No
Boreale
. No
Champlain
when
Finity
had broken out of hyperspace here. Just the ion traces of ships that had come in…

And gone. Both.
Champlain
in the lead, one guessed, and
Boreale
in pursuit. A nominally
Alliance
ship fleeing; and a Union ship, which without their permission couldn't hunt in this space, in hot pursuit

The feeling on
Finity's
bridge was one of frustration. It was second watch in charge of the jump out of Mariner-Voyager Point. That was Madison's crew, with Francie's watch coming on—third watch; and for a buffer, and to handle emergencies, and the senior-juniors, who'd fought the ravages of a double-jump and hauled their depleted bodies out of bunks faster than no few of the seniors could… anticipating the remote possibility of battle stations, and moving to be there in case one of the seniors
couldn't
make it to station.

JR held the lead of that set.

But nothing. Just nothing. They turned out to be alone in the jump range, and that was, for the ship, good news. JR told himself so—even if Madison hovered after turnover with a general glum look, and even if Helm 2 had stayed around to be a problem to Helm 3.

Battle nerves, with no battle, no answer, even, for simple human curiosity—and the suspicion that a Union ship had just slipped their witness in Alliance space with full opportunity to carry out an attack on what was, nominally, still an Alliance ship.

That was JR's suspicion, at least. And at a time when they were trying their damnedest to persuade Alliance merchanters to surrender to the Alliance station-based government at Pell some of the rights
Finitys End
had once been pivotal in winning.

Ignore the fact our Union ally just took out after an Alliance ship… and did it one jump short of Esperance, the hardest sell they'd face? No matter that that Alliance ship might be guilty of aiding the enemy, the enemy that had not that long ago been their own Fleet; and no matter that some Alliance merchanters were caught on the wrong side of the line. The Alliance found it hard to forgive Union, who'd roughly handled some merchanters during the War and whose territorial lines were now trying to choke some merchanters out of business.

Alliance was very ambivalent about rimrunners, ships skirting the edges of the modern international alignments; and about dealings with Union; and while they wanted Mazian kept at bay, it was not a universal sentiment that the Alliance could exist without the bugbear of Mazian out in the dark—because that fear kept Union behaving itself.

A Union ship taking on a merchanter would harden Alliance merchanter attitudes at the same time it might incline Esperance Station attitudes
toward
an agreement with Union. Get-tough policies regarding merchanter compliance weren't going to win points with the small merchanters who were one economic catastrophe away from having to run cargo they wouldn't ordinarily choose to be running. JR didn't know what the Old Man thought of the situation. He
hoped
that the ion signature they picked up was of a passage, not a battle shaping up to happen in the witness of Esperance and anyone docked there.

He'd bet first that the Old Man, who was not on the bridge this jump, was well aware, and second, that the Old Man was not amused at
Boreale's
giving chase past Voyager without consultation. Likely he was already considering how he was going to counter the negatives if the situation blew up.

They had, JR concluded, a potential problem. They'd given
Boreale
what
Boreale
couldn't otherwise have gotten: a straight short-cut through
Alliance
space to warn the
Union
's own presence at Esperance—reputedly there was a major one at all times—that there was something in the offing. And that could be bad news—or good

There was no possibility that the carrier they'd met at Tripoint had sent
Boreale
: arrival times at Mariner didn't make it possible, but he was curious enough to sit down and call up Mariner data to confirm that
Boreale
had, indeed, been in port for a week before they'd gotten in. No. Even granted ships could over-jump one another in hyperspace, that theory didn't fit the timeline.

Boreale
had come in from Cyteen vector and it had no possibility of having been sent by
Amity
. So its being there was honest.

Boreale's
guarding them in the understanding that they were trying to get merchanters into compliance with the customs regulations, that was honest, too.

So it was perfectly reasonable, aside from chasing
Champlain
, that they would want to get on through to Esperance where, unlike at Voyager, they had a straight shot to carry a message to Cyteen and could equally well contact other ships whose black boxes had been in very latest communication with Cyteen, to check out what was going on elsewhere. In
Boreale's
situation, they'd have done exactly the same.

The Old Man had played it safe, and here they were.
They
had to go in at Voyager, refuel, do their business of meetings with station administration, and go through the routine motions of trade. They wouldn't slight Voyager by bypassing it

The good break was that, in the slight imprecision of ship arrivals in a gravity well, Helm had used the belling effect of a ship still at the interface to skip a moderately loaded and very powerful ship well out even from the center of system mass, which wasn't the center of the star… and the direction of that skewing was toward the position Voyager station happened to be at this time of its year. It was a beautiful job both from Nav and from Helm, a piece of skill that had, all at the same time, simplified their dive toward the station, let them speed faster longer than they'd dare at larger stations, and given them a chance of making up time in what had become a race with
Boreale
toward Esperance.

Ahead was the least modern station still functioning this side of Union, a small station, with part of its ring under construction before the War, a construction, their files said, which was now abandoned.

Pell, Mariner, Earth… Cyteen, as well, had strung multiple establishments through the ecliptic of their stars. But impoverished Voyager was just Voyager, in orbit about a tiny planet near a debris ring unpleasantly perturbed by a smallish gas giant. Voyager had built a watchful defense not originally against piracy but against high-velocity visitors. But its capabilities had found dual use during the War—use which had kept it alive and kept it a port of call for whatever side could hold it.

And that had been Mazian, for most of the War years.

Prior to the War, in the days of shorter-hopping ships, Voyager had been a bridge toward the hope of more exotic mining at Esperance, but in post-War years, mining had turned out less lucrative for Esperance than the lure of trade with Cyteen.
Mariner
also wanted the promise of traffic between Pell and Cyteen, if the peace held. Now, poised between Mariner and Esperance, Voyager was the unfortunate waystop between two stars only fragilely interested in trading with each other.

There was a time crunch on. They had a very little time at this star to turn that situation around.

The Old Man arrived on the bridge. Madison and Alan alike stood up. JR did, and all the other juniors on the bridge, in respect of the senior captain, who waved them to be seated.

Madison
delivered the first report, of which JR caught the salient details. Alan delivered the second one. Frances had shown up in James Robert's wake, to hear the general reports, and JR listened on the edges, aware of Bucklin having moved up near him.

"Well," the Old Man said with a wry expression that framed official reaction, "we have a need to get through this port and get our job done. We
are
going to get turned around and get out of here in record time. All senior crew to round the clock hull watch, all able-bodied to transfer of cargo, senior staff to what I hope will be short meetings. I don't anticipate station will object to our proposals at all, but the local merchant trade is likely to. And I'd rather have had
Boreale
here with us. But we don't have that. What does the schematic show us? Who's in port?"

"That's three interstellars, sir," Alan said, "end report."

That was incredibly thin traffic.

"We mustered better than that at our last conference with Mallory," the Old Man said with a shake of his head. "Jamie. Who are they? Mariner origin or Esperance?"

"
Velaria
left Mariner for Voyager a week ago, sir,
Constance
and
Lucky Lindy
were before that. Nothing but ourselves,
Boreale
, and
Champlain
the last five days. No ships from Esperance in port."

"Counting that a week's rated a long stay here, it's a reasonable expectation, three ships. Voyager's apt to berth about five ships on any given twenty-four hours, rarely ten. We're the fourth.
Boreale
and
Champlain
would have made it almost to traffic congestion, for this port."

"Yes, sir," JR said. He'd been ready. It was a struggle, on a two-jump, to have mental recall on everything you'd been supposed to track. It was a job skill. A vital one, and he hadn't failed it.

"Four empty cans," the Old Man said, "food grade and clean, ride in the hold. The job will be to test and transfer whatever we pick up on the local market to assure ourselves a clean cargo, one can to the other. Senior crew will not have forgotten this drill, our compliments to the junior crew, who will carry out a great deal of the transfer. We will secure lodgings for all crew near the ship, and crew will not separate from assigned groups, no matter what the excuse. We will make an additional issue of clothing, purchased at the station. We will forego ship's rules on patches and tags. Wes, you'll treat the details in a general announcement. The station could use the trade, and we won't have access to the laundry. Junior-juniors will stay particularly close, within safe perimeters, and
only
senior staff will deal with food procurement, clothing issue, all other activities where something from the outside comes aboard this ship, including personal baggage, which will be extremely limited. Security Red applies. Cargo will, however, be inert."

It was the old New Rules. Nothing came aboard without being scanned through, logged, accounted for, and the crew member in question absolutely able to vouch for its integrity. Security Red usually applied when they were hauling touchy cargo… explosives, not uncommonly in the past. This time it wasn't the cargo's volatility that prompted the precautions against sabotage. It was Voyager's.

The Old Man walked about then, taking a short tour past the number one stations, the general boards, spoke a word with the Armscomper, who'd only begun to shut down the hot switches, and with Tech 1, who'd handled the tracking on the emissions signatures.

Habitually the Old Man also said a word to the observing staff, as they called it: the senior-juniors, and JR waited, standing.

"I had a memo from Legal before jump," the Old Man said in a lowered voice. "I'd like to see you in my office. Now."

"Yes, sir." It was not a topic he wanted to deal with on the bridge. It wasn't a topic he wanted to deal with. And had to.

The Old Man left the bridge. JR looked at Bucklin, who cast him a look of sympathy, and went to report a situation he'd hoped, pre-jump, to have solved.