Tripoint (22 page)

Christian shoved him backward, flat, and said catch his breath.

Good idea, he thought. But it rode his thoughts consistently that Christian wasn’t his friend, the captain of the ship had ordered him to be in the galley, and if there was a set-up for blame possible, Christian wasn’t necessarily the one going to catch hell—he just couldn’t think through the haze and the headache to figure out what the game was.

“Listen,” Christian said, settling, a weight on the mattress edge beside him. “The guys made a mistake. I don’t want it blown up into an incident that can sour this trip, you read me clear? Mad crew can make a lot of trouble.”

It sounded like an actual honest reason. A serious reason. He wasn’t brought up a total fool—a ship in space was wholly vulnerable. This ship in particular was vulnerable to its hire-ons or any total crazy they happened to get aboard. Was Christian saying they were already running scared of the crew, or what, for God’s sake? And was Christian in some kind of personal bind about what had happened?

His head hurt too much to figure it out. Christian meanwhile got up and rummaged through his clothes locker, after something, he didn’t figure what, or want to know. He just wanted back in the galley or back in the brig without being used or manipulated into something that could bring their mutual father to bounce his already aching body off the bulkhead again, that was his chief concern. He’d just had it fairly good where he was, today, and he
didn’t
want a set-to with anybody right now.

Except—

Christian came back, threw some clothes onto the end of the bed. “You concussed? Anything broken?”

He ran his tongue around his mouth as he lay there. Stared at Christian down his nose. There were cuts. Teeth ached. Everything ached. “Ribs, arm, maybe cracked. I don’t know. “ He couldn’t help it,
couldn’t
keep his mouth shut and give up a fight with a guy who had one due. “What’s it to you?”

“All right, all right. “ Christian waved his arms. “Cancel, stop, go back. Bad start, all right? Bad start. My damn temper.—But I caught hell for bringing you aboard. Austin calls me a fool. Everybody calls me a fool. But it was a judgment call. Don’t ask me what I was supposed to do! You’re the one went poking into what didn’t involve you, and now everything’s my fault. When I’m wrong I catch hell for it. When I’m right I catch hell. When I’m right and they’re wrong I catch double hell, but I didn’t plan this, I did the best I could, all right? I got you out of there. Probably Austin would’ve, if he was there, just the same, but it’s my fault since I did it and he didn’t have to, you understand me?”

Most guys wouldn’t. Not half. But he’d lived with Marie. “Yeah,” he said, and struggled to sit up, with a hand pressed against his forehead, because his brain hurt.

“So I’m sorry,” Christian said. “Bad start. Austin pounded
me
against a wall. And he didn’t pass the warning to all the guys. The ones that pounded you, they won’t, twice. They’ll walk wide of you, and me. I have it over them in spades right now. They’ll do me favor points, you, too, if you don’t make a case. Rough guys, but they know they’re on notice.”

“I won’t be anybody’s target. Not anybody’s. Not theirs. Not yours.”

“I said I was sorry. I’d had my own run-in with Austin, all right?—There’s a shower. Clean clothes. Couple of days yet before jump and then you can lie still and let it heal. You’ll be fine. Won’t even scar.”

Christian could say that. But a shower was attractive.
Real
attractive. Clean clothes… it felt as if the coveralls had grown to his skin. He’d sweated in them. He’d bled over them. He loathed the feel of them. And the loan of a shower and clean clothes… was a bribe worth a peace treaty, far as he was concerned. He started to get up.

“You make it on your own?” Christian asked.

“Yeah,” he said, and hauled himself up, one hand on the wall.

A little dizziness then. But his sight was mostly back. He got up in the unaccustomed great space of the biggest junior officer’s cabin he’d seen, and wobbled back to the shower.

Forgot the clean clothes. He turned around to trek back again, but Christian brought them to the bath and left him alone, afterward, to knock around the small mirrored space, getting undressed.

After that was warm water vapor, luxury detergent, the kind-to-abused-skin sort, and he could have sunk to the bottom of the shower and stayed there a year, but it had an auto-cycle he hadn’t set right and it went to blow dry long before he wanted it.

He opened the door a crack and snaked an arm out for the clothes, such as they were. He’d never tried skintights. Never had the budget and never wanted the cousins laughing at him.

Black. Shimmer-stuff. Damned little left to the imagination, one size fit all, or you definitely shouldn’t think about it.

He hadn’t a mirror inside the shower and he wasn’t at all sure, except they were clean, dry, more comfortable than they looked, and the shirt—blue—at least was tunic-style. Tabs at the side that made the waist fit—another one-size, and the loose sleeves, anybody could wear who didn’t have arms to their knees. He wasn’t sure. He felt like a fool coming out of the shower, and stopped in the doorway for a mistrustful glance at the mirror.

“Better,” Christian said, “A little
style
, Hawkins, couldn’t hurt.”

Heat from the shower hadn’t made him steadier. He wobbled. He glared at this implied deficiency in Hawkins taste. He stuck his foot in his boot in the doorway, and leaned on it, working the heel on while he braced a hand against the wall.

“So you want off this ship,” Christian said.

Escape? A deal with Christian? No way in hell did he trust it. He balanced and shoved the other foot in the other boot.

“This is a true or false. Possible even for a Hawkins. Fifty percent chance of being right. Do you want off this ship?”

Christian might want rid of him. That part he could believe, the way he couldn’t readily believe Christian’s stepping into a brawl only to save him. He didn’t know how obvious his suspicions were, or what it could cost him to challenge Christian with the truth. But he decided on confrontation, for good or for ill. “Not to any Mazianni carrier, if that’s the trade you’re in.”

“Yeah, yeah, we just load up the fools and Mazian pays top price, loves to buy those fools. Use your damn head. Where are we going?”

“Pell’s what I’ve heard.”

“Not a bad place to ship from. Civilized port. Lot of ships. Go where you like. Can’t beat that.”

Christian left a silence in which he might be expected to say something. He didn’t. He didn’t trust anything about the offer, didn’t trust Christian’s motives—

“Look,” Christian said. “Sit down. “ Christian indicated the end of the bed, and reluctantly, because his knees weren’t that steady, he went back to the bed and sat. “You may have noticed,” Christian said, leaning against the wall near him, one booted ankle over the other, working the heel back and forth, “that Austin is a difficult sod. I said we hadn’t an auspicious beginning. Much less so with maman, Beatrice, who
doesn’t
like your presence. We are the victims of two ferocious women, one of whom wants to kill us and the other of whom wants to kill you before you kill us.”

“I’ve no desire whatever—”

“I’m perfectly certain you’re an independent and difficult spirit, yourself, but maman, understand, Beatrice… will absolutely not tolerate you on this deck, not as Marie Hawkins’ offspring, certainly not as Austin’s, competing, shall I say it, with me? Shall I say plainly that Beatrice wants you out of here, you most certainly want to go… and it seems to me that you have no evidence against us, nothing but a merchanter quarrel,—and we all know how quickly stations wash their hands of our untidy affairs. I would never tie myself up with station police and lawyers, on the Alliance side of the Line, lawyers and court dates and station law—you don’t like station lawyers, do you, Hawkins? You’re not that crazy.”

“No.”

“Not going to be that crazy.”

“No.”

“Pell has customs. But you’ve got your passport…”

God. They
would
have it.
With
his papers, that said he worked computers.

“—Found it on you. No problem. Just get you out the airlock all legitimate and you take a walk.”

“And end up dead.”

“Hawkins. Hawkins. I had my chance in the warehouse. But the fact that you’re, realtime, my slightly
older
brother, suggests to certain members of this crew that you might find a niche aboard, that you might pose some threat to interests that have worked a long time to secure the positions they have, do you see? Not that I’m immune. I could rather like you, as a human being. You have certain engaging qualities, occasional flashes of actual intellect, you don’t know the depth of dimness I have to deal with in the crew, God! you’d be such a relief! But I’m not about to see you become a focus of dissension, or find partisans. This is a rough crew. We manage very borderline individuals. We simply can’t afford anyone challenging an officer’s authority, do you see? So for various reasons, and peace with maman, who is our chief pilot, far more essential than either of us, and a perfect
bitch
when she’s taken a position, I’m perfectly willing to have you disappear at Pell.”

“And if something goes wrong?”

“If something goes wrong you end up back aboard. Or with the Pell cops. Choose aboard, is my advice. You wouldn’t like the cops.”

No spacer liked the cops.

This spacer didn’t like the idea of being shanghaied into another crew, either.

And it scared him that Christian’s logic halfway persuaded him.

“So?” Christian said. “Deal?”

He shrugged. He’d had a lifetime of Mischa ducking questions, apologizing his way past personnel decisions. He didn’t like the taste it left in his mouth. Didn’t like what this maneuver implied about Christian’s style of command. ‘We can’t afford anybody challenging an officer’s authority. ‘ Hell.

So Christian helped him escape?

“Yeah,” he said, not daring, not wanting to say anything that could change Christian’s mind. It wasn’t for him to critique whatever got him back to
Sprite
.

Christian got up.

“Better get you back,” Christian said. So the deal seemed done.

—v—

OLDER BROTHER WAS THINKING ON the way back to the brig. Older brother was limping, too—the guys had exceeded suggestions, and that was a problem. “Tell anybody that asks,” Christian said, “that it was me that gave you the black eye.”

“Is it black?”

“It will be.”

Damned odd, Christian thought, everything was so placid of a sudden. They came to the brig, and he figured then that all the rules still applied, in Austin’s book, and therefore in his, no matter that older brother wasn’t in fighting form. “Cable,” Christian said, and Hawkins went inside, picked it up off the floor and locked the bracelet on his own wrist. “Let me see it.”

He shut the grid. Hawkins came to the bars and let him inspect the bracelet. The wrist and hand were bruised dark, ugly and painful looking. And the lock was solid.

“Yeah,” he said, thought about offering to change hands with the lock, but, hell, they weren’t a charity. He started off down the corridor, to leave older brother to his own amusement, or to get to sleep, or whatever, but it occurred to him then that there were reasons security might lock down tight after the rumors got topside, lock down in ways that would screw everything. Besides, older brother might do something entirely stupid if Austin came down in Austin’s morning to check on the rumors that were bound to get started—he didn’t trust Jamal’s discretion or Tink’s to hold them off five minutes longer than it took a casual mention to get up to the bridge.

So he went back to the bars, leaned there. Hawkins had sat down on his bunk.

“Hawkins. A warning. If our mutual papa says you’re scum, say yes, sir, thank you, sir. That’s all. No matter what.”

Hawkins’ jaw set. You could see the muscle clench. “Man’s an ass.”

“Hawkins. A small touch of sanity. You’re already on scrub. You want to find yourself working four shifts on scrub? No sleep? That’s your choice. You keep your mouth under control.”

A moment of surly silence.

“Son of a fool bitch,” he said, “I’m trying to get you out of here. I’m trying to save your ass. Can we have a yes out of the savee? Can we have a thank you, just a trial run?”

Hawkins kept glaring at him. Didn’t trust him, and properly so. But then Hawkins said, “Yeah. Thanks.”

“Mouth, Hawkins-brother?”

“Yeah. “ Hawkins dropped his stare, at least. Tucked a foot up under the other leg and winced. “I hear. I understand you.”

“Easy to pronounce, please and yessir. Get you out of a lot of situations.”

Hawkins didn’t say a thing.

“Damned fool,” Christian said with a shake of his head, but he knew the look, he saw it on Austin, he saw it in mirrors when he’d had a run-in with authority. He withdrew his arms from the bars and went on down the corridor with his own blood pressure up, and with an intense urge to do bodily harm to Hawkins before he got off this ship.

So it didn’t make sense that the bloody mess the guys had left Hawkins in should turn his stomach queasy, or make sense that the bruises he’d left had touched the same nerves. He’d seen worse. He’d probably done worse, he didn’t keep count.

Didn’t know why, when he got up to the bridge and went through his initial shift-change checks—an hour late—he kept flashing on that parting argument and Hawkins’ bruises—his fault—and how, just quite strangely, in a ship full of hire-ons you couldn’t trust and a handful you knew you could rely on to guard your back, he had an instant expectation of Tom Hawkins’ behavior, the body language, the way he worked, an expectation what he was thinking and what it took to get him off a point he wanted to hold…

But, dammit, he had no choice.

He walked the aisles, monitored their course. They’d been lazing along for a full run of the clock in the dark of Tripoint, eating, sleeping, checking and fixing and maintaining. Midway through his watch they’d do a long burn, no traffic problems here, get up to speed on their outbound vector toward Pell.