Tripoint, p.28
Tripoint, page 28
part #6 of Company Wars Series
"Tom… " Whatever Saby was going to say, she didn't, then, just took on a hurt look. He didn't know why. Not exactly. He guessed he'd been rude, he'd burst the bubble of false trust. "Why in hell'd you…?" she started to ask.
But she didn't finish that either, just looked upset with him, or the situation, or something maybe he'd led her to think.
"I'm sorry," he said. He meant it. Saby'd been all right. "We don't need Tink. It's fine."
"You think they're going to pull something, don't you?" She sounded surprised. As if it couldn't possibly occur to her. "You think this whole thing's a set-up."
"Hey. " He waved a hand, Stop, enough. "No problem."
"Shit. " She jammed her hands into her belt and looked at him sidelong, from under a fall of bangs, as if she was re-adding everything.
"I said I wouldn't run. You didn't have to do anything. But thanks. It was nice."
Her mouth opened, her head came up, she would have hit him with the back of her hand. Hard. Except he blocked that one with his arm. He wasn't moved to hit her. But she was mad, furious with him, and he didn't know which of several things she was mad at.
"Don't hit," he said, "I don't like it."
"For God's sake…"
Another censorship. Her eyes watered. Her chin quivered. He'd made her mad, but he couldn't read it, couldn't react to what didn't make sense. He could defend himself if she hit him again, he wasn't going to take that from her, but he equally well wasn't going to get into personal arguments this close to the end—he was just scared, was all, scared of her tears, scared of him getting mad—he wanted to like her, he wanted so much to like her, and that was the most dangerous thing…
"Where did you get the notion," she asked him, "that I didn't give a damn? Where did you think I lied to you? Tom,—"
He panicked, backed up when she reached, she'd gotten to him that badly, and she just stared at him, confused, hurt, he couldn't tell. Maybe it was even real, but he'd thought that too many times. It wasn't reasonable it could be true now, when he didn't even know her, except she liked roses and coffee and blue glitter-stuff…
"I didn't lie to you," she said. "I didn't need to lie to you. Do you think I did?"
She hit right on it, and the lump wouldn't go away. He was scared of that little, little step she was asking, everything he'd tried to give away, too long, too desperately, until he'd learned strong people didn't want it and weak ones drank you dry.
But he'd hurt Saby. Dammit, it wasn't fair of her to be mad—he was mad, and hurt, that she was mad.
"I like you," Saby said. "I want you to bunk with me. I didn't think, I didn't think I was, like, pressuring you…"
"You're not."
"Why Tink? Why do you trust him?"
"I don't know," he said, and that was the truth. "I don't know."
—viii—
FIGURE THEY'D BE FIRST IN or last in. But among the first, it turned out—a mortal relief, the phone call from Saby advising Corinthian they were leaving the Aldebaran. "Can you be there at customs?" Saby asked, tacit reminder there was a customs problem.
Easy fix, in fact. "Boy called," Austin said to the agent at the kiosk out front of Corinthians ramp, and handed him the Union passport. "Lot activity of in and out the ship, he went out with the group—officer had the passports—"
The agent thumbed the passport. Ran the mag-strip for the visa, and it flashed Valid. "Checked through."
"Yeah, he was supposed to get it from my son, something came up, he ran off on that problem… he's twenty-three, scatter-brain, we'd been trying to find him to get it to him—this morning, he panics and phones our com, and now it's a problem."
"Yeah. Kids. I got two. Twelve and sixteen. Four-room apartment."
"God."
"Kid coming in?"
"On his way."
"I'll have it here, no problem. " The agent put the passport under the desk. They talked about other things, the economy, both sides of the line, the entertainments on Pell, the free-port situation… for a ship's captain at board-call, he was uncommonly leisured; for himself, with strangers, he was uncommonly conversational, but from where he stood, talking, he could see the whole dockside behind the customs line, a dim, utilitarian deckage, a neon-lit frontage of shops behind the two girders that were part of Pell's main structure.
They talked about kids. He tried to imagine. About wives. He censored his arrangement with Beatrice. A couple of Downers waddled past, bound for somewhere. Transports lumbered along… Pell government was still talking about that transport rail system, the agent said, but the transport companies and the warehouses on Pell liked the status quo, on which they made money, and detested the rail, in which they endlessly debated all the share-plans the station could draft.
A couple of crew showed up, the early ones, Michaels and Travis, with slightly startled looks to see the captain standing waiting.
"Captain," Michaels said. "Need a word. " And Michaels diverted him aside from customs long enough to ask if he wanted anything. Michaels had basic good sense, in the essentials of discreet trouble-handling, and he would have left Michaels to take his watch down here, if it were slightly less explosive.
"I'll handle it," he told Michaels. "Just start the count. Develop a board glitch, we don't display until we're on last boarders."
"Done," Michaels said.
A group of eleven came in, techs, a couple of dockers… Corinthian's monetary and liberty-time bonus for arrivals in the first hour of board-call got no few takers, but still, spacers were spacers, liberty-loves were hard to leave, and expect the real rush right down at the bottom of that first hour, and the last just right before the deadline, mostly the dockers, in that group, a few D&D's that took some dealing with, but if Sabrina didn't make it in the next quarter hour, she was going to find herself at the end of a long, long…
A closed taxi pulled up close, braked, and opened a door. No banker, no official got out, just, improbably—three Corinthian spacers, one Sabrina, in her usual fancy-business, Tink, in his bar-crawling gear, down to the bare arms and the tattoos and the earrings, and of course his threadbare duffle and the bagfuls of edibles. Last out, God, Tom Hawkins, sudden fashion queen, blue skintights, fancy black sweater, mod haircut, and a designer carry-bag, purple and orange—taste would out, evidently. Saby'd said he 'needed a few things.'
He set hands on hips and watched this apparition walk up to customs… got a questioning look from the agent, who surely couldn't do a confident ID on Hawkins' new side-fall haircut. He nodded, the agent pulled out the passport, delivered a sober lecture to Hawkins, probably about being sure about the passport, Hawkins nodded, seemed dutifully impressed and sober, and the agent gave the whole group a wave-through… you bought it at Pell, customs wasn't interested, unless you just radiated shady deals. And nobody could know how to rate this taxi-load.
Hawkins and Saby cleared customs, while Tink was still chattering at the agent, offering him a candy or something, Tink was a walking sugar-fix. Meanwhile the passport headed for Hawkins' pocket.
Austin held out his hand. Smiled tightly.
Hawkins stopped so abruptly, evidently just now seeing him, that Sabrina ran into him.
Austin crooked a finger.—Hawkins meekly came and, to his outheld hand, delivered the passport.
"Stow your stuff with Saby," Austin said then, as they walked, as he pocketed the passport. "Log in with ops, no word to anybody what happened, do you copy? And I'll see you in my office thirty minutes to undock, on the mark, Mr. Hawkins.—Saby, you get him there."
—ix—
IT WAS HIM, DAMMIT, WITH Saby, and Tink, Austin was waiting the other side of the barrier, and Christian had not a question in his mind.
"He knew, damn him! He knew all along! Damn her! Damn her!"
"Damnation to go around," Capella said, leaning against the store-front. "We've still other strays to watch."
Redirection. In Capella, suspect it.
"You knew. You damned well knew!" He was furious. And Capella, having talked to Austin aboard, having had a chance to ask questions… came back with a grim look, a, "He's keeping the schedule," and, to his, "Why?"—"Thinks Hawkinses are as serious a threat, evidently."
Capella swore she didn't, personally, think Sprite was on a scale with their other problem. But the taxi was gone from the customs area, Tom Hawkins was walking up the ramp with Saby, who, dammit, owed him some loyalty, being his cousin, being who'd brought him up—
And it looked to him like a problem, a major problem, Hawkins in his new clothes and his new haircut—he hadn't recognized him. He'd thought he was some better-class recruit than they even usually got, somebody Saby had recommended.
But, no, it was a surplus, conniving brother, whose clothes alone cost more than the 200c he'd been carrying—who hadn't had a passport, who'd had no way to lay his hands on his without Corinthian's complicity; who hadn't had a credit card… if Family Boy had money stashed in banks the other side of the line, he couldn't have accessed it without ID.
Somebody else's money. Corinthian money.
"Austin's damn clearance," he said. "Look at him!"
"Looks pretty good, actually," Capella said. "And Saby. My, my, my."
"You did know!"
"I know now. Give up the quarrel, Chrissy-lad, it's over, it's won, this is why papa Austin said what he said."
"About what?"
"Just that he'd made up his mind. That Sprite was more threat than one Mr. Hawkins. Damn right. He had this one tied up and wrapped around his high-credit finger, just yank the string."
It didn't make sense to him, except that Austin had played him for a fool deliberately, Austin had spent whatever it took to make him look a fool not only to Saby and Tink, who were in on it, but in front of Capella, who might have been under orders, in front of the whole crew—people laughing behind his back, enjoying the joke.
He looked at Capella, searching for any hint of that laughter at his expense. He couldn't find any hint of it, but Capella wasn't easy to catch, no expression at all.
A handful of dockers arrived, Gracie Greene and Metz, Dan Blue, Tarash and Deecee, trouble, all of them, he watched them walk up to customs, and his gut was in an upheaval, thinking… they were going to hear about it, everybody who'd been out in the search after his brother had to have known, at some point, and here he stood, playing the fool, while his brother went into the ship on his own terms.
"Fuck it!" he said, and grabbed Capella by the sleeve, heedless of safety. "It's a couple of hours till ail-aboard, there's a bar, there's a restaurant…"
"I thought we were economizing," Capella said.
"Hell! I've got a k or so left, what do I fucking care? Fucking smart-ass Family Boy, on Austin's fucking credit, while I spend everything I've got? Fuck it, fuck it all, let's blow it, everything—"
"Chrissy,—"
"I said everything! What do I need? A father who fucking cares what I do? A cousin with one shred of basic loyalty? A partner who doesn't go screwing my brother? What's the matter with me, Pella, what's the matter with me?"
Capella delayed to look at him. Long. "Got all your parts," Capella said. "Things work."
"Don't be a damned ass!"
"Maybe you better work with what you got," Capella said, "what you stand in when you shower, hmn? It's all anybody's got."
Philosophy wasn't Capella's long suit. She threw it at him now and again, she whispered it in his ear when the ship made jump, she confused him when he was mad, and blew it off, which nobody else could do*.
"Dance," Capella said, "is a lot nicer than looking for stray brothers. Couple drinks, a few dances—long and dark after, Chris-person. Long and deep and dark. I'd dance, myself."
"You're crazed! You're absolutely crazed!"
"It's my calling. But there's now, and thereafter's such quiet, Chris-ti-an. Hear it. Listen to it. Don't waste time. It's so scarce."
"Don't con me! You knew, you knew what my father was doing!"
"Guessed, maybe. Didn't know. " She hooked his arm with hers. "Last trip of all, maybe. There's something in the dark, I don't know where."
"Sprite?"
"Maybe several somethings. They may take me back, Chris-person. I don't know. There's only now. This liberty's been a bitch. Let's go."
"What—take you back?" She'd met them at this station, she'd come, with what he overheard and what he guessed, with codewords and such she didn't show to customs. She was their access to a trade they had to have, that otherwise they couldn't find, couldn't access. A second, perilous grab at Capella's arm, as she turned away. "Have you told Austin this notion? Have you told him?"
"I'm not supposed to have told you. No. This is a confidence, Christian-person."
"Christian, dammit! And where do you get such notions? We aren't even near hyperspace."
Pale eyebrow quirked. Mouth pursed. "The presence. The spook that's in port. Is that solid enough for you?"
"Can you feel something?"
Capella had a fey, distracted look for an instant, as if she reached out at that moment, into something he couldn't, nobody could. But the eyes flickered and Capella drew in a sudden, unscheduled breath before she shook her head. "You can convince yourself of anything. No. " She seized his arm and tugged him toward the frontage, and the bars. "I wish we'd see them."
"Who? The spook? This Patrick?—You think they're boarding, now?"
"I say if you find a small ship that is, you know his name."
"Well, look, for God's sake, look at the boards. " He'd been occupied with Hawkinses and Capella wasn't, Capella wasn't concerned with Sprite or Hawkinses in singular or plural, he saw that now.
"I know two names. Because one is, doesn't mean the other isn't."
"You mean there could be a back-up in port? Tell Austin, for God's sake!"
"Austin knows there's danger. Austin's danger is Hawkins. Was, from when you let elder-brother take a walk."
"The hell!"
They'd reached the frontage. Almost the door, and Capella swung around on him, angry, astoundingly so. "Your fault, Christian, and mine, I should have said, and didn't, it looked good, what you were doing, and it wasn't, it had flaws. It had flaws in Christophe Martin, it had flaws in assuming elder-brother's easy, it had flaws all over the place, and my looking for him was very hard, and very scared, Christian-person, so scared I made another mistake, and got attention from this damn spook, who isn't ours, do you follow me?"
Anger whited out half of it. But ours came through, touching on what he'd tried to understand. Ours. Theirs. Us. The Fleet. "Explain. Explain to me—ours, theirs,—who's us?"
"Mazian's, Mallory's, Percy's… the Fleet's pieces, the pieces that have their own partisans, their own spooks and their own suppliers… you work for Mazian, that's the truth. But not all do. Some ships are dead, Mallory turned coat, the rest… " Capella ran out of breath, and didn't find another immediately. "I'll tell you this. There's two needs here. There's Corinthian, wanting everything the same forever, and there's us, who can't make that happen, Christian, captain-papa won't understand that, but there's those that want me so bad…"
"Why? Because you can do what you do?"
"You might say. Because I know places."
"What places?"
"Places they want. Badly.—I can't let Corinthian get boarded. It's not in my own interest, you copy that? If the captain asks,—make him believe it. And we're running with guns live this jump. Take my side on that, if there's any argument on it."
It was crazy. He was up to his ears in the Hawkins business, he couldn't think about anything else, but Capella was telling him about waking up the guns they'd used once in his lifetime, about the ordinance Michaels maintained and serviced and kept viable, through all these ship-board years. It didn't happen. A chance encounter on a dockside didn't lead to live guns, when a crazy woman was trying to get them hauled in by port authorities.
But a spook had gone invisible… which could well mean some other ship at Pell was in an unannounced board-call at this very moment.
Hell in a handbasket, that was what it felt like. He wanted to break a Hawkins neck, and two or three others, but suddenly he was perceiving a threat that didn't give him time for that. Austin might not take it seriously. Austin had his mind on Hawkinses, on Marie Hawkins in particular. That was who was ruling Corinthian's movements. Hawkinses had them going out instead of lying in port until at least they had the advantage of not being a target.
A genuine spook didn't carry cargo. It could overjump them, just traveling higher and faster in hyperspace. It had engines the power of which it didn't admit, and if it decided to beat them out to their next stop, hell…
But Austin wasn't thinking down that track, no, Austin was busy with a woman who'd been threatening to kill him for twenty plus years, and who now wanted her son back…
But Capella had said it when she came back from talking to Austin, and confessing to him what she'd stirred up… that Austin hadn't listened, damn him. Austin had known he could get Hawkins back, and therefore that became Austin's immediate problem, the one Austin daren't be caught in port with; and damn Austin and his whole elaborate joke… Austin wasn't going to listen to anything beyond that hazard. They couldn't even prove that Marie Hawkins was inbound, there being no reasonable prospect that a merchanter should leave its schedule for one lost crewman. Marie wasn't in charge of Sprite, and Austin was still running—scared, was what it amounted to, outright embarrassing to the ship.
And after Austin's cheap little piece of humor at his expense, he was the one who had to get his priorities straight, forget personal issues with Hawkins and cousin Saby Perrault, and listen to the ship's second navigator, who was trying to tell them they could get their butts shot off.
So it was up to him again, save their collective asses by doing what had to be done—talk to Michaels, tell their one-time gunner to dust off the simulator during system passage, lock himself in with it, and flip that armament switch when they went otherside.
