Union Alliance - Merchanter's Luck Part 12

"I'm not pushing. I'm asking whether you might see it differently."

"The way you look at me, Stevens-"

"Sandor."

"-makes me wonder."

"I understand how you feel. About being on the ship. Maybe my talking like that, in front of the others back there-is a good example of what you're worried about. I didn't think how it went out. I know you know what you're doing. I just had my mind full... I've just got some things with the ship I haven't got straight yet. Things-never mind. I just have to get over the way I'm used to doing things. And dealing with the kind of crew I'm used to getting."

She tightened her mouth in a grimace that looked preparatory to saying something, exhaled then. It seemed to have slipped her. "All right. I understand that too. You mind fixing comp in my quarters while we're at it?"

His heart did a thump, attack from an unexpected direction. "I'll get it straightened out. Promise you. After jump."

"Security locks?"

They seemed like a good thing when I had unlicensed crew aboard."

"Well, it's a matter of the comp keys, isn't it?"

It was not a conversation he wanted. Not at all. "Look, we haven't got time for me to get them all down or for you to memorize them. We're heading up on our exit."

"Is there something I ought to know?"

"Maybe I worry a bit when I've got strangers aboard. Maybe that's a thing I've got like you've got att.i.tudes-"

Her back went stiff. "Maybe you'd better make that clear."

"I don't mean like that. I'm dead serious. That's all I've got, those keys, between me and people I really don't know that well. And maybe that makes me nervous."

The offense at least faded. The wariness stayed. "Meaning you think we'd cut your throat."

"Meaning maybe I want to think about it."

"Oh, that's a little late. A little late. We're on this ship. And we're talking about safety. Our safety. If something goes wrong on my watch, I want those keys. None of this nonsense."

"Look, let's get through jump first. I'll get you a list then."

"Through jump, where we're committed. I don't consider the comp a negotiable item." She jabbed a thumb toward her cabin door. "I want my comp in there operative. I want any safety locks in this ship off. I want the whole system written down for all of us to memorize."

"We haven't got time for that. Listen to me. I'm taking Lucy through this jump; I don't want any question about that. I'll see how you handle her; and then maybe I'll feel safe about it. You look good. But I'm reckoning you never handled anything but sims in your life. And I'm sleeping on the bridge if I have to, to see no one makes a mistake. I'm sorry if that ruffles your pride. But even I haven't a good notion of what Lucy feels like loaded."

"Don't you?" Suspicion. A sudden, flat seizure of attention.

"I'll take the locks off when I know who I'm working with." He thrust his hands into his pockets, started away, to break it off. Instinct turned him about again, a peace offering. "So I'm a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. But Lucy's not what you're used to, in a lot of senses. I haven't nursed her this far or got you out here to die with, no thanks. I'm asking you-I want you all on the bridge when we go into jump."

"All right," she said. A quiet all right. But there was still that reserve in her eyes. "You watch us. You see how it is. Sims, yes."

"And backup bridge. But you catch me in a mistake, you do that."

"I don't think I will," he said softly. "I don't expect it."

"Only you're careful, are you?"

"I'm careful."

They approached jump, a sleep later, a slow ticking of figures on the screen-a calm approach, an easy approach. Sandor checked everything twice, asked for data from supporting stations, because jumping loaded was a different kind of proposition. Full holds, an unfamiliar jump point-there were abundant reasons to be glad of additional hands on this one, "Got it set," he said to Allison, who sat number two. "Check those figures, will you?"

"Already doing that," Allison said. "Just a minute."

The figures flashed back to him.

"You're good," he said.

"Of course." That was the Dubliner. No sense of humility. "We all are. We going for it?"

"Going for it.-Count coming up. Any problems?-Five minutes, mark. Got our referent." He reached for the trank and inserted the needle. There was no provision on this one but a water bottle in the brace, for comfort's sake. No need. They would exit at a point named James's, and laze across it in honest merchanter fashion; and then on to Simon's Point, and to Venture.

The numbers ticked on.

"Message from Pell buoy," Neill said, "acknowledging our departure."

No reply necessary. It was automated. Lucy went on singing her unceasing identification, communicating with Pell's machinery.

"Mark," Sandor said, and hit the b.u.t.ton...

Chapter XII.

... Down again, into a welter of input from the screens, trank-blurred. Sandor reached in slow motion and started to deal with it. Beside him, the others-and for a moment his mind refused to sort that fact in. There was the ma.s.s which had dragged Lucy in out of the Dark... they were at James's Point, Voyager-bound; and Ross's voice was silent.

"Got it," Allison was saying beside him, icy-cold and competent. "Just the way the charts gave it..."

He was still not used to that, a stranger-voice that for a moment was desolation... but it was her voice, and there was backup on his right, all about him. "Going for dump," he said.

And then Curran's voice: "We're not alone here."

It threw him, set his heart pounding: his hand faltered on the way to vital controls. Velocity needed shedding, loaded as they were, tracking toward the ma.s.s that had s.n.a.t.c.hed them. Things happened fast in pre-dump, too fast- "Standing by dump," Allison said.

"That's Norway," Neill said then.

He hit the dump, kicked in the vanes, shedding what they carried in a flutter of sickening pulses. "She still with us?" he asked, meaning Norway. Sensor ghosts could linger, light-bound information on a ship which had left hours ago. No way to discern, maybe-but he wanted his crew's minds on it Wanted them searching. Hard.

"Better set up the next jump in case," Allison said. "I don't trust this."

"Outrun that?" Sandor focused on the question through the trank haze. "You're dreaming, Reilly." They kicked off velocity again, a numbing pulse that scrambled wits a moment He blinked and reached an unsteady hand toward comp, started lining the tracking up again.

"We're in," Allison said. "That's got us on velocity."

"Getting nothing more than ID transmission," Neill said.

"Got a solid image," Curran said. "They're close. That's confirmed, out there, range two minutes."

The image hit his screen, transferred unasked. "Should I contact them?" Neill asked. "I'm getting no com output"

"No." He blinked, the sweat running on his face, concentrated on the business in front of him-and that ship out there, right on them as a warship reckoned speed, silent, sullen-was Mazianni in all but name. He got a lock on the reference star, saw the figures come up congruent, fed them in and sent the information over to Allison's console.

"Got it clear," Allison said. "Still want me to take it, or do you want to hold it?"

He caught his breath, sent a desperate look over all the board in front of him. Vid showed them nothing but stars; other sensors showed the G well itself, the ma.s.s, the heat of an almost-star that was the nullpoint. And the pockmark that was Norway. A situation. A raw Dubliner recruit asking for the board, maybe not particularly anxious to have control at the moment. He shunted things over to the number two board. "She's yours." His voice was hoa.r.s.e. He pretended nonchalance, let go the restraints, reached for the water bottle and drank. "Here."

Allison looked aside, a distracted flick of her eyes, took the bottle and drank a gulp, pa.s.sed it back. He slipped it back into the brace and hauled his way out of the cushion.

Looked back again, toward the screens, with a tightness about his throat.

Norway. And Mallory was saying nothing. The presence did not surprise him. Somehow the foreboding silence did not either.

"Mainday shift," he said, "let alterday have it."

"Sir," Neill muttered, the first courtesy of that kind he had gotten out of them. Natural as breathing from a Dubliner on a bridge. Spit and polish, and he finally got it out of them. Neill stirred out of his place.

"Got another one," Deirdre said suddenly. "Got another ship out there."

Sandor crossed the deck to his chair in a stride and a half, flung himself into it.

"ID as Alliance ridership Thor" Deirdre said. "Coming out of occultation with the ma.s.s."

"One of Mallory's riders," Allison muttered.

"If they've got the riders deployed-" Neill said, back at his own post.

No one made any further surmises.

"Second signal," Deirdre said. 'The ID is ridership Odin."

"Deployed before we dropped in here," Sandor said.

"What do you know about it?" Curran asked.

"Sir," Sandor said.

Curran turned his head. "From back at Pell, sir-did you expect this? What was it Mallory said?"

"That she's watching the nullpoint. I'm not at all surprised she's here. Or that she's not talking. What would you expect? A good morning?"

"Lord help us," Allison muttered. "And what kind of cargo have they handed us, that we get Mallory for a nursemaid?"

"I don't ask questions."

"Maybe we should have," Curran said. "Maybe we should get ourselves a couple of those canisters open."

"I'm reckoning you'd find chemicals and station goods," Sandor said. "I'd even bet it's Konstantin Company cargo, the same as we would have gotten. I don't think that's what Mallory's interested in at all. I think we're being prodded at."

"Because they're still breathing down your neck: that's what we've inherited-your own record with them. It's some kind of trap, something we've walked into-"

"You applied for Venture routing, Mr. Reilly. Dublin handed a marginer a half a million, stifled an inquiry, and headed us for Pell's most sensitive underside. A Unionsider. Put it together. Union and Alliance may be at peace, but Mallory's got old habits. Maybe you'd better think like a marginer, after all. Maybe you'd better start figuring angles, because they have them in offices, the same as dockside. And the powers that be on Unionside had them, when they got cooperative and wanted Dublin this side of the Line. But maybe you'd know that. Or maybe you should have sat down and figured it"

"If you've got it figured, then say it. Let the rest of us in on it"

"Not me. I don't know. But we're not making any noise we don't have to. We tiptoe through this point and get that cargo to-"

"Moving," Deirdre said. "Thor's moving on intercept"

Sandor dived for the board, a sweat broken out on his sides, sickly cold on his face. He stopped his hand short of the controls, clenched it there in the reckoning that there was nothing they could do... No arms the equal of that; no ability to run, loaded as they were.

(Ross?... Ross... What's to do?) "Contact them?" Allison asked.

"No."

"Stevens... Sandor... what precious else can we do?"

"We keep going on our own business. We let them escort us through the point if that's what they have in mind. But we don't open up to them. Let the contact be theirs."

She said nothing. Helm was still under her control. The ship kept her course as she was, no variances.

"Message incoming," Neill said: "They say: Escort to outgoing range. They say: request exact time and range our departure from Pell."

"They're tracking us," Curran muttered.

"They repeat. They want acknowledgment."

"Acknowledge it," Sandor said. "Tell them we're figuring." He sat down at comp, keyed through and downed the sound, started calling up the information.

"Sir," Neill said. "Sir, I think you'd better talk to them. They're insisting."

He s.n.a.t.c.hed up the audio plug and thrust that into his ear, adjusted the mike wand from the plug one-handed. "Feed it through."

"... accurate," he caught. "Lives ride... on absolute accuracy, Lucy. Do you copy that?"

"Say again.-Neill, what's he talking about, lives?"

"To whom am I speaking?" the voice from the ridership asked. "To Stevens?"

"This is Stevens, trying to do your calculations if you'll blasted well give me time."