Union Alliance - Merchanter's Luck Part 13

"Your ship will proceed to Voyager as scheduled. You'll dock and discharge Voyager cargo. You have three days for station call, to the hour. And you'll return to this jump point on that precise schedule."

"Request information."

"No information. We're waiting for that departure data."

"Precise time local: 2/02:0600 mainday; locator 8868:0057: 0076.35, tracking on recommended referents, Pell chart 05700."

"2/02:0600 precise?"

"You want our ma.s.s reckoning?" He was scared. It was a track they were running, no question about it He flung out the question to let them know he knew.

"You carrying anything except our cargo, Lucy?"

"Nothing." The air from the vent touched sweat on his face. "Look, I'll run that reckoning on my own comp and give you our RET."

"Is 0600 accurate?"

"0600:34."

"We copy 0600:34. Your reckoning is not needed, Lucy."

"Look, if you want data-"

"No further questions, Lucy. We find that agreeing with our estimate. Congratulations. Endit."

"We're in trouble," Allison said.

"They're accounting for our moves," he said. "Just figuring. I'd reckon Pell buoy scheduled us pretty well the way they set it up." He shut down comp, back under lock. "So they know now what our ETA is with the ma.s.s we're hauling: every move we make from now on-"

"I don't like this."

"Every point shut down. Everything monitored. We make a false move-and we're in trouble, all right" He thrust back from controls. "Nothing's going to move on us here while that's out there. Shut down to alterday. Mainday, go on rest."

"Look," Curran said, twisting in his cushion. "We're not going through Pell System lanes anymore. We're not sitting here to do autopilot, not with them breathing down our necks and wanting answers."

"I'm here," he said, looking back. "I'm not leaving the bridge: going to wash, that's all; and eat and get some sleep right back there in the downside lounge. You call me if you need anything."

"Instructions," Allison said sharply, stopping him a second time. "Contingencies."

"There isn't any contingency. There isn't any blasted thing to do, hear me? We've got three days minimum crossing this point, and you let- He saw her face, which had gone from appeal to opaque, unclenched a sweating hand and made a cancelling gesture. They're one jump from Mazianni themselves, you know that? Let's just don't give them excuses. We're a little ship, Reilly, and we don't ma.s.s much in any sense. Accidents happen in the nullpoints. Now true a line crosspoint and don't get fancy with it."

She gave him a long, thinking stare. "Right," she said, and turned back to business.

He walked, light-headed, back to the maintenance area shower, not to the cabins; had no cabin. The others had. He was conscious of that. And he had to sleep, and they chafed at the situation. He stripped, showered, alone there with the hiss of the water and the warmth and a cold knot in his gut that did not go away. Mazianni ships out there... and they had died out there, in the corridor, on the bridge, bodies fallen everywhere. Reillys sat and joked and moved about, but the silence was worse than before, deep as that in which Lucy moved now, with Mallory.

(Armored intruders, a Name-a Name on them, on the armor; but he could never focus on it, never get it clear in his mind; he had never talked about that with Ross; never wanted to know- until it was too late, and Ross never came back to the ship...) He had thought for a day on Pell that he was free, clear. But it was with them. It ran beside them, the nightmare that had been following Lucy for seventeen years.

They took it three and three, she and Curran, on a twelve-hour watch: three hours on and three off by turns, their own choice, Allison sat the number two chair on her offtime or padded quietly about the bridge examining this and that, while their military escort kept its position and maintained its silence.

From Sandor/Stevens, who had made his bed aft of the bridge in the indock lounge-not a sound, although she suspected that he wakened from time to time, a silent, furtive waking, as if he only grazed sleep and came out of it again. And from Neill and Deirdre, asleep in cabins four and five respectively, no stirring forth. Exhausted: none of them was used to this, and what kept Stevens going- What kept Stevens going bothered her, at depth and at every glance back in his direction. Something wrenched at her gut-the memory of an attraction; the indefinable something that had made her crazy on Viking, that had gotten her linked with a no-Name nothing in the first place. Owner of his ship, he had said, in that bar; and maybe that had been enough, with enough to drink and a mood to take chances.

Not quite dead, that gut-feeling. And she had watched the man drawn thinner and thinner, from haggard to haunted-not sleeping now, she was sure of it. Not able to sleep. That ship out there, that was one good cause. Or the c.u.mulative effect of things.

And he was not about to trank out, no, not with the comp locked up and a warship on their necks; with two Reillys at the controls.

She and Curran talked, when they sat side by side at the main board, spoke in low tones the fans and the rotation could bury. They talked operations and equipment and how a man could have run a ship solo, what failsafes would have to be bypa.s.sed and how a man could talk his way past station law.

She reckoned all the while that they might be overheard. Quiet, she signed when Curran got too easy with the remarks. Curran rolled his eyes to the reflective screens and back again, reckoning what she reckoned. *No sleep, he signed back, the kind of language that had grown up over the years on Dublin, practiced by crew at work in noise, embellished by the inventive young and only half readable by outsiders. *Watching us.

*Yes.

*Crazy.

She shrugged. That was a maybe.

*Care? A touch at the heart, a swift touch at the head, sarcastically.

She made a tightening of her jaw, an implied gesture of her chin to the ship that paced them. *That. That concerns me.

*He keeps the comp keys.

*He's afraid.

*He's crazy.

She frowned. *Probable, she agreed.

*Do something.

There was no silence in sign. It translated as I won't. She turned a degree and looked Curran in the eyes.

This was her rival, this cousin of hers, the one that pushed, all the way, all the years. It was yang and yin, the both of them, that made alterday Third what it was, and carried Deirdre and Neill.

Curran never stopped, never let up. She valued him for that, knew how to reckon him, how he wanted the number one seat, forever wanted it. It was one thing when there were twenty ahead of them-and another when they sat sharing a command. Watch it, she made her look say; and he understood. She read it in his eyes as easy as from a page.

Number two, she thought of him. And she caught herself thinking it with a stab of cold, that that was how it was. There was a man who had this ship, and there was a working unit of Reillys who knew each other's signals and had no need of explaining how it worked, who looked down familiar perspectives and knew what they were to each other and where all the lines were. Number two to her: it fell that way in seniority by two days, two days between her and Curran, between her and a man who would have been as good, at least in his own reckoning. Who could not have gotten them what she had gotten- -not the same way, she could reckon him saying, raw with sarcasm.

But Curran never saw any way but straight ahead. Would never have blasted them out of their inertia. Would never have taken any chance but the one he was born with: dead stubborn, that was Curran. And it was his flaw. Possibly he knew it. It was why he was loyal: the same inability to swerve. It was a different loyalty from Deirdre's, which was a deep-seated dislike of a number one's kind of decisions; or than Neill's, which was a tongue-tied silence: Neill's mind went wider than some, so it took him longer to put his ideas together-a good bridge officer, Neill, but nothing higher. She knew them. Knew what they were good for and how the whole worked, stronger than its parts. She looked down from where she sat and their reflexes all went toward each other and toward her in a sequencing so smooth no one thought about it.

She was number one to them. To Curran she had to be. To justify his taking orders and not giving them, she had to be. And the others-it all broke apart without herself and Curran at their perpetual one-two give and take. Curran was jealous of Stevens, she realized that all in a stroke, a jealousy that had nothing to do with s.e.x; with a pairing, yes; with a function like right hand and left. For her to form another kind of linkup, taking another man in a different way, in which an almost-brother could not intervene, in which he had no place-What was Curran then? she thought-too proud to settle to Deirdre and Neill's partnership, and cast out of hers in favor of a stranger met in a sleepover. He had to go on respecting her judgment: that was part of his rationale. But that left him. That flatly left him.

She cast a second and sidelong look at her cousin, settling deeper into the cushion, folding her arms. "I'll think of something," she said.

"Going to eat?" he asked after a moment.

She looked at the elapsed time. 1101. She nodded, got out of the seat and walked off toward the galley.

A cold sandwich, a cold drink from storage... mealtime, as they reckoned time aboard, from the time of their arrival at the nullpoint. There was no need to force a realtime schedule on tired bodies, no need to reckon realtime at all except in communications, and they were getting no more of that. They had become introverted in their pa.s.sage, disconnected from other time-scales. And there was, when all the movement and human noise was absent-a silence that made her eat her sandwich pacing the small floor s.p.a.ce of the galley; that sent her eye to the vacant white plastic tables and benches of the galley mess, and her mind to s.p.a.cing out the number that could have sat at the tables-Thirty. About thirty. Double that for mainday and alterday shifts, a ship's crew of about sixty above infancy. And the vacant cabins and the silences...

She had expected a lot of 1 G storage on the ship, a lot of the ring given over to cargo. Customs would expect that. It was a question how far customs would break with courtesies and search the cabins: more likely, they contented themselves with the holds and did a tight check of the flow of goods on and off. A perfect setup for a smuggler, nested in a ship like this, with a good story about pirates and lost family.

But a woman had lived in her cabin before her. Another of Stevens' women, might be... but there were the other cabins, all lived in like the first several-they a.s.sumed. She had clambered in and out of the barren, dark-metal core storage, entered all the holds they used in dock... but the ring beyond the downside area and the cabins and the galley she had not seen. None of them had. They were still visitors on the ship they crewed.

She finished the sandwich, tossed the drink container into the waste storage, and the sound of the chute closing was loud.

1136. There was time enough, in her free hour, to walk round the rim. To come up on Outran from the other corridor that let out onto the bridge.

She left the galley area, rejoined the central corridor that pa.s.sed through that, walked past other doors, all cabins, by the numbers of them. She tried a door, found it unlocked. The interior was dark and bitter cold. Power-save. A cabin, with the corner of an unmade bed showing in the light from the door. Rumpled sheets. She logged that oddity in her mind, closed the door and walked on, to an intersecting corridor. She entered it, found another bank of cabins behind the first, a dark corridor of doors and intervals. The desolation afflicted her nerves. She walked back to the main corridor, kept going, the deck ahead of her horizoning down as she traveled.

A section seal was in function: she came on it as a blank wall coming down off the ceiling and finally making an obstacle of itself. Maybe four seals-around the ring. Four places at which the remaining sections could be kept pressurized, if something went wrong. It sealed off the docking-topside zone, the loft.

She stopped, facing that barrier, her heart beating faster and faster-looked at the pressure gauge beside the seal manual control, and it was up.

The loft... was the safety-hole of the young on every ship she knew of. Farthest from the airlock lifts; farthest from the bridge, farthest from accesses and exits. And sealed off. It might open. It might; but a section seal was for respecting: gauges could be fatally wrong, for everyone on the ship.

And no one was a.s.s enough to keep hard vacuum in the ring, behind a closed door.

She hesitated one way and the other. Caution won. She reckoned the time must be getting toward 1200-no time and no place to be late. She turned about again-faced Stevens.

"Hang you, coming up on a body-"

"It's cold in there," he said. He was barefoot, in his robe, his hair in disarray.

"What's there?" she asked. Her heart had sped, refused to settle. "Cargo s.p.a.ce?"

"Used to be the loft. Sealed now. I'll turn the heating on in my watch. I didn't think of it. Never needed to go there."

"You give me the comp and I'll fix it."

He blinked. She wished suddenly she had not said that, here, her back to the section seal, halfway round the ring from Curran. "I'll fix it," he said. "I'll do it now if you like."

"You're supposed to be off. You have to follow me around?"

Another slow blink. "Got up to get a snack. Thought you were in the galley."

"I'm supposed to be on watch." She walked toward him, past him, and he fell in with her, walked beside her down the corridor into the galley. She stopped there and he stopped and stood. "Thought you were going to get something."

He nodded, went over to dry storage and rummaged out a packet, tore it with his teeth and got a gla.s.s. His hands shook in pouring it in, in filling it from the instant heat tap.

"Lord," Allison muttered, "your stomach. You shouldn't drink that stuff when you've got a choice."

"I like it." He grimaced and drank at it, swallowed as if he were fighting nausea.

"You're wiped out, Stevens."

"I'm all right." His eyes had a bruised look, his color sallow. He took another drink and forced that down. "Just need to get something on my stomach."

"You watching us, Stevens? You don't want us loose unwatched? I don't think you've been sleeping at all. How long are you going to keep that up?"

He drank another swallow. "I told you how it's going to be." He turned, threw the rest of the brown stuff in the gla.s.s into the disposal and put the gla.s.s in the washer. " 'Night, Reilly. Your noon, my midnight."

"Why don't you go get in a real bed, Stevens, a nice cabin, turn out the lights, settle down and get some sleep?"

He shrugged. Walked off.

1158, She was due. She walked behind him, watched his barefoot, unsteady progress down the corridor, walked into the bridge behind him and stood there watching him find his couch in the lounge again. He lay down there on his side, pulled the blankets about him, up to his chin, stiff and miserable looking.

The gut-feeling was back, seeing the disintegration, a man coming apart, biological months compressed into days-h.e.l.l on a solo voyage while Reillys sipped Cyteen brandy.

She looked at Curran, whose eyes sent something across the bridge-impatience, she thought. She was late. Curran would have seen Stevens leave; she imagined his fretting.

"Your turn," she said, coming to dislodge him from the number one seat "Any action?"

"Nothing. Everything as was."

She settled into the cushion. Curran lingered, tapped her arm and, shielded by the cushion back, made the handsign for question.

* Negative problem, she signed back. And then a quick touch at Curran's hand before he could draw away. *We two talk, she signed further. *Our night.

*Understood. A moment more he lingered, knowing then that something was on her mind. She gave a jerk of her head toward the galleyward corridor. *Out, she meant; and he went.

Watch to watch: it was the tail of her second, 1442, when Neill came wandering out of the cabins corridor, shaved and combed and fresh-looking. Deirdre followed, pale and sober, looked silently at Stevens sleeping there. *All right? The uplifted thumb. It was a question.

Allison nodded, and they padded back again, to the little personal time they had in their schedules. She had the ship on auto, their escort running placidly beside them. She watched Curran at his meddling with the comp console, quiet figuring and notetaking. There was not a chance he could crack it. Not a chance.

A bell went off, loud and sudden, down the corridors the way Neill and Deirdre had gone. She looked up, a sudden clenching of her heart, at the blink of a red light on the lifesupport board. The bell and the light stopped. The section seal had opened, closed again. "Deirdre," Curran was saying into com. "Neill. Report."

A weight hit Allison's cushion, Stevens leaning there. "Section seal's opened," she said. "Are they all right, Stevens?"

"No danger, none."

She believed it when Neill's voice came through. "Sorry. We seem to have tripped something."

Exploring the ship. Trying to do the logical thing, going around the rim. "You all right?" Curran asked.

"Just frosted. Nothing more. Section three's frozen down, you copy that"

"You got it shut?"

"Shut tight."

"Here," Stevens said hoa.r.s.ely, tapped her arm. 'Vacate. I'll get the section up to normal. Sorry about that."

"Sure," she said. She slid clear of the cushion and he slid in.

"Just go on," he said. "I'll take care of it, do a little housekeeping. Take a break, you and Curran. We don't need to keep rigid schedules. G.o.d knows she's run without it"

Curran might have gone on sitting, obstinate; she gathered him up with a quiet, meaningful glance, a slide of the eyes in the direction Neill and Deirdre had gone. "All right," he said, and came with her, walked out of the bridge and down the corridor.