Tripoint (28 page)

Had to deal with the kid. Had to do something, he supposed, If he packed him off to Earth or parts elsewhere, he’d ask himself what he’d given up, what the kid had become… he didn’t know why in hell he should care.

But he’d worry, among other things, that the kid’s path might cross his again, in the way of ships coming and going, and he might have an older, cannier enemy by then.

That was the reasoning that had been nagging his subconscious. He usually discovered good, sane reasons for what, seemed instinct in himself. He’d stayed alive and kept his ship alive. He’d made his mistakes before he took over the ship. Since, he’d been far more careful.

Sober responsibility, mature judgment and all that.

In that light, he probably ought to have the kid up to his office and find out if scrub duty and another jump had mellowed him.

But probably it wasn’t a good idea to do it now, when he had a mild headache and the kid might have the same. He’d satisfied his curiosity back at Tripoint. He was going off-duty, he needed to stretch out and let the kinks out of his back… hell, after dock was soon enough. Let the kid see all the crew get liberty, while he was stuck aboard, let him ferment a while in absolute boredom.

But Hawkins was going to mean keeping extra security aboard. And somebody wasn’t going to be happy to be in charge of that.

Do a split watch, bonus pay, give a couple of the guys an extra five hundred apiece and let them spend it on reduced dock time. He could find volunteers.

Hawkins was already going to cost the ship a thousand c, not even figuring the early undock at Viking. Not even figuring the future security costs, when they made Viking port again.

It wasn’t like having a second son. It was like having something stuck to your boot, that, try as you might, you couldn’t shake off.

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—i—

THE GALLEY DIDN’T SHUT DOWN on approach to dock, no, it was up to its elbows in business. Tink was doing special pastries for the security detail that had to remain aboard… because of him, Tom thought glumly, neither Tink nor Austin being privy to Christian’s plans.

And the pans of food for two hundred plus crewmen during their outbound hours… all had to be ready. They went into the freezer.

Meanwhile the mess-hall vid screens had come on, with what might be a canned view of Downbelow, with its perpetual clouds, greenhoused, he understood, so you could rarely see the continents or the oceans. The indigenes below that cloud cover looked heavenward in hopes of a glimpse of their lord Sun. Made amazing large-eyed statues to do the job for them in the case someone lapsed in duty, he supposed—divine stand-ins.

When he’d been a kid he’d dreamed of Downbelow. Never looked to see it, seeing how the War brought a border between them. He never…

“H’
lo
, there,” a voice said, out of other dreams, the deep, echoing dark of hyperspace. Blond, in an officer’s fatigues—Capella arrived, drew a cup of coffee.

And said hello, for God’s sake. Hello didn’t mean an assault. No reason for his gut to go to jelly or uncertainty to rise right through his knees.

“Feeling better, are we, Tommy-person?” She came and leaned elbows on the counter to sip her coffee. “H’lo, Jamal, hi, Tink. Smells good in here. Pasta stuff?”

“Pasta,” Jamal said. “No samples.”

“Spoilsport.—Tommy-person. “ She reached across the counter and touched the back of Tom’s hand with her little finger. “Tommy-person. You can come scrub
my
quarters anytime. Some of us appreciate quality.”

They were about to dock. He was about to leave the ship. And Capella came to harass him a last time. Parting gesture. He hadn’t seen her since system-drop. He was seeing black from second to second, was acutely aware of his own skin, and the touch of ghostly fingers in his sleep.

“Eh?” Capella asked. “What do you think, Tommy-person?”

“I don’t think the captain would approve.”

“Do you do everything he says?”

“Right now I do. Yes, ma’am.”

“Ma’am,” Capella laughed, and he remembered Saby hadn’t liked it either. “Oh, come on, Tommy-pretty. You can call me chief, on duty, and I’ll call you Hawkins. On my own time, and we are on my own time, here, Capella’s just fine. “ Her finger traced down the bone above his index finger. “I bet they could spare you for a cup of coffee and a small sit. Especially if I pull rank. How about?”

“I can’t.”

“Jamal?”

“I don’t—”

Christian… arrived in the door and paused there, just the single beat it took to say Christian hadn’t expected Capella to be there, and he didn’t like what he was seeing. He had an instant guilty feeling, and he didn’t immediately know for what; a fear Christian might take jealous offense, and screw the escape, if he ever intended it—a fear Capella’s purpose
was
to screw it. It was quiet in the galley. Jamal and Tink had stopped work, and didn’t say a thing.

“Time for older brother to go back in his box,” Christian said cheerfully, walking up to the counter. “Put the toys away, Cappy.”

“Aww,” Capella said, and shoved away from the counter—tossed the cup into the disposal. She looked at him—she had a wicked look, a naturally predatory look. He didn’t even think she intended it. Or it was supposed to tell him something he didn’t know how to read. She gave him a theatrical sulk, and a lift of the chin, flashed a dazzling grin at Christian Bowe. “I’ll take him back.”

“Not a chance. “ Christian had a key. Tom let him unlock the bracelet, endured Christian’s proprietary hand on his shoulder, asking himself what he should believe. “I’ll handle it. See you. The promise stands.”

“Going to cost you,” Capella said.

And didn’t say a thing more as Christian nudged him into motion.

But he couldn’t go without a look at Tink and Jamal. Couldn’t say a good-bye that wasn’t supposed to happen—that from second to second he wasn’t sure was going to happen, or that he wanted to happen. He only looked to fix their faces in his mind, and chanced to see a very different Capella standing by the counter, a Capella all business and grim as hell’s gates.

Christian swung him around abruptly, took him the familiar route back to the brig. A quiet route. The lowerdecks crew were doing their last minute scurrying about, and half the passenger ring would be securing for dock, crew and stations that belonged there gathering thick in docking stations, corridors crowding up along the take-holds.

There were lewd comments, offers to take ‘the new boy’ onto the docks. Christian didn’t spare a glance, just hurried him around the turn to the brig, a corridor full of its own offers and comments… worrisome comments from dockers at take-holds up and down, waiting for the grapple-to and the lock to open. Rough crowd. Rude crowd. They held it down when Christian said stow it, but Christian didn’t have to wait out the docking in an open-fronted cell, and it wasn’t aimed at him.

Besides which, Capella had made Christian mad, and Christian wasn’t talking to him, until Christian took him inside the brig and to the far rear by the bath, face to face with him.

“What did Capella say?”

“Didn’t. I don’t know what she wanted. She hadn’t gotten that far. “ His back was against the wall. It wasn’t a position he wanted in a fight. At least the cable wasn’t on, this time.

But Christian didn’t shove him further. Instead, he reached inside his jacket and pulled out a dozen passports, Union red and Alliance blue. Thumbed open the topmost, red.

To his picture, his name. His passport, his papers, all the freedom to pass customs and take hire, even to prove his identity and origin. Everything was in that red folder. He reached for it—but Christian snapped it shut and held it with the others.

Christian’s terms. Everything was, and Christian was smug and smooth.

“After,” Christian said. “After we walk out. Duty officer carries the papers on all the dockers, that’s the way we work. They go out first. It’s going to look like you slipped through… I was taking you to Medical, right?”

“I guess.”

“You hit your head during dock. Only on the way to Medical, you broke and ran for it, and mixed in with outbound crew. Probably you faked the bump. Got it? Only that’s just the story I tell about how you got out, am I doing this in small enough words, slower brother? I do things like always, take these guys out and you just come along with me through customs… these guys have zero percentage in calling me a liar. They have to deal with me tomorrow, and they won’t notice a thing when papa asks, how’s that?”

“I need my papers.”

“What I’ve got here,” Christian said, pocketed the passports, and reached in a side pocket for a short stack of notes, Alliance cash. “That’s two hundred, immediate save-your-ass cash. I can give you a name, a ship that’ll take hire. Name’s
Christophe Martin
. I’ll walk you down there, myself. Get you hired, get you papers, Martin’s going out tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“Viking. Meet your approval?”

Breath came short. “Yeah. “ He suddenly had to revise everything. The two hundred, he hadn’t imagined—and the recommendation to another, outbound ship, immediately, without having to hang around Pell. It was everything he could hope to get on his own, heaped up and running over, if he could get his hands on those papers.

It only didn’t add on Christian’s side, on
this
ship—the passport missing, on a guy who also turned up missing from Christian’s escort… Christian was going to catch hell for it, was what it looked like.

Maybe that was why Capella had wanted to talk to him, maybe that was why the voice in his dreams kept saying Don’t trust Christian… and maybe
because
the warning had come in hyperspace it threaded its way into his waking mind without any denying it… that voice was Capella, too, he was sure it was, and he couldn’t help doubting, and couldn’t figure what Christian was doing.

An expensive favor. Clearly. He might have to revise his opinion on Christian. Maybe Christian was paying a price for what he did, and
had
to shove him out the door hard and fast and for his own selfish reasons, but Christian hadn’t had to give him the money.

Christian left, without putting the cable on—left him to the catcalls and promises of the crew outside. He’d heard the door lock. For the first time he was glad it was locked, and he hoped opening it wasn’t just a button push.

“Hey, pretty-boy,” someone yelled.

He went to his bunk and sat down. In a moment more, the take-hold sounded, and he took a firm grip on the inset handhold, next to the e-panel.

Interminable minutes, then, to dock. He sat and tried not to chase those circular paths of thought again, why, or how, or what the choices were. His were all made.

Maybe there was a chance of seeing Marie again. Of his own quarters, on
Sprite
.

Hell, they’d have bumped somebody into his space. There was always a waiting list, and his cousins wouldn’t have waited till the sheets were washed.

Didn’t bloody miss them. That was the unhappy truth. Marie… Marie wasn’t an affection, she was a bleeding wound. But she was his bleeding wound. He couldn’t but ask himself where she was and what was happening to her. He
liked
Tink. He was glad he’d met Tink. He couldn’t say that about a lot of people. But he had to get back. Something about bad pennies always turning up.

Mischa was going to be so glad to see him. Rodman was going to die. It was a kind of revenge. Let them think they were rid of him. He didn’t know what Rodman would say. He was almost homesick to hear it. Didn’t even want to beat hell out of him. They were getting old for that solution. In a couple of weeks subjective time, he’d suddenly arrived at that point of maturity.

Give him a couple of weeks with Rodman, he’d recover his edge.

Bump and touch. It wasn’t easy to claim a head injury with
that
dock. No fault to find in the station’s computers, the ship’s engineers, or the pilot at the helm.

Butterflies hit his stomach. As soon as that touch came, the crew outside the bars left their take-hold points and started for the airlock, while the echo of the grapples locking was still ringing through the hull. The corridor emptied. Fast.

Then he thought… maybe Christian won’t come. Maybe it’s all a joke.

Maybe Austin caught him with the documents. Maybe Capella spilled the whole business.

Inner lock opened, then the outer,
crash-crash-thump
, with the slight rush of air you almost always got. It smelled… of something he’d never in his life smelled. Exotic
and fresh
, and wonderful. It was Pell. Downbelow.

He wanted to go. He truly wanted to.

The grid started retracting. Christian showed up, outside. “Hurry up,” Christian snarked at him, and he hurried, out and along with Christian, overtaking the crew in the airlock. Christian yelled for quiet, ordered a line-up along the wall, started calling out names and sorting through the passports and papers.

“Anybody I didn’t call, stay the hell aboard, go find the chief and tell her you need documents.”

There was one, who swore and complained he’d turned in his fuckin’ papers, he hadn’t had them, it was a
Corinthian
screw-up.

“It’s a clerical, all right. Just get back there,” Christian said, and strode along the ragged line, holding him by the elbow, the fistful of passports in the other. “Come on. Stay a damn line, for God’s sake! Look like business, and don’t mouth off to Pell customs, they got a nasty habit of dropping you out of computers, screw your accounts, you don’t need that kind of trouble, so
shut up
!”

There were hoots and catcalls that died fast as Christian led the way down the access, the crew and Christian in coats, himself in his shirt sleeves, which he hoped to God nobody in customs was going to question. He might be hyperventilating—the cold made his breaths too short, and made his chest hurt. Frost whitened every surface but the heated floor. Heated plates, too, as they came down the ramp and into the vast echoing shadow of the dock, under white lights that, like stars, glared from far aloft in the girders, lighting nothing until the light reached the metal decking and the waiting customs agents, at the check-through at the bottom of their ramp. Neon from the bar frontages pierced through the dark and the spots, faint traceries of bar and shop signs, freedom, just that close ahead.