Merchanter's Luck

Chapter XV

… Venture system: a star with a gas giant companion and a clutter of debris belting it and the star. And a small, currently invisible station that had been the last waystop for Sol going outward. FTL had shut it down; Pell’s World, Downbelow… had undercut Sol prices for biostuffs, closer, faster. A rush for new worlds had run past it, the Company Wars had cut it off for half a century—But there was a pulse now, a thin, thready pulse of activity,

No buoy to assign them routing: they had been warned of that. Sandor dumped down to a sedate velocity closer to system plane than a loaded ship should—but there was no traffic.

“Lonely as a nullpoint,” Allison muttered, beside him. “If we didn’t have station signal—”

“Never expected much here,” Sandor said. “It’s old, after all. Real old.”

“Com’s silent,” Neill said. “Just noise.”

“Makes me nervous,” Curran muttered. “No traffic, no buoy, no lanes—can’t run a station without lanes. They’re going to get somebody colliding out here, running in the dark.”

“I’m going after a sandwich,” Sandor said. “I’m coming back to controls with it.”

“You stay put,” Allison said. “Neill, see to it for all of us. Anything. Make it fast.”

Neill slid out. Functions shunted: com and cargo to Deirdre, scan one and two to Curran; Allison kept to her sorting of images that got to number one screens, his filter on data that could come too fast and from confusing directions. Nothing was coming now… only the distant voice of station.

‘We’re coming up on their reply window,” Curran said.

“Ready on that,” Deirdre said.

Neill came back, bearing an armful of sandwiches and sealed drink containers. Sandor opened his, wolfed down half of it, swallowed down the fruit juice and capped it. The silence from station went on. No one said anything about it. No one said anything.

“Picking up something,” Curran said suddenly. “Lord, it’s military. It’s moving like it.”

The image was at Sander’s screen instantly. “Mallory,” he surmised.

“Negative on that,” Neill said. “I don’t get any Norway ID. I don’t get any ID at all.”

“Wonderful,” Allison muttered.

“Size. Get size on it.” Sandor started lining up jump, reckoned their nearness to system center. “Stand by: we’re turning over.”

“You’ll get us killed. Whatever it is, we can’t outrace it.”

“Get me a calculation on that.” He sent them into an axis roll, cut in the engines as drink containers went sailing, with a collection of plastic wrap, half a sandwich and an unidentified tape cassette. “Cargo stable,” Deirdre reported, and he reached up through the drag that tended to pull his arm aside, kept on with the calculations.

“We can’t do it,” Allison said. “We won’t clear it, reckoning they’ll fire. I’ve got the calculations for you—”

No word of contact: nothing. He flicked glances at the scan image and Curran’s current position estimate… saw number three screen pick up Allison’s figures on plot. The intersection point flashed, before the jump range.

“You hear me?” Allison asked sharply. “Stevens, we can’t make it. They’re going to overtake.”

“They still don’t have an ID pulse,” Neill said. “I don’t get anything.”

“They’re going to overtake.”

“What do you expect us to do?” Sandor stopped the jump calculation while they hurtled on their way. His body was pressed back into the cushion, his pulse hammering in his ears, drowning other sounds.

“Haul down,” Allison shouted at him. “Lord, haul down before they blow us. What do you think you’re doing?”

His mind was blank, raw panic. Instinct said away; common sense and calculations said it was not going to work. And excluding that—

“Stevens!”

“Cut it” Curran shouted at him. “Stevens, you’ll kill us all; we can’t win it.”

He looked at the Dubliners, a difficult turning of his neck. “Suit up. Hear? I’ll cut back. Allison, Deirdre, Neill, get below, suit up and hurry about it. Curran, I want you. The two of us— Get that Dublin patch off. Move, hang you all.”

He cut the power back—buying them time and losing some. The Dubliners moved, all of them, nothing questioning, not with a warship accelerating in pursuit. They scattered and ran, crazily against the remaining acceleration. The lift worked, behind him: only Curran stayed, zealously ripping at the patch.

“What’s the score?” Curran asked. “Set up an ambush for them aboard?”

“No. We’re the only crew, you and I. You signed on at Pell, got thrown off Dublin.” He reached to the board, put cabins two, four, and five on powersave. “Get up there and strip down their cabins; shove everything into yours. Move it, man.”

Curran’s face was blanched. He nodded then, scrambled for the corridor, staggering among the consoles.

The gap was narrowing. No hail, even yet; no need of any. The ship chasing them knew; and they knew; and that was all that was needed. It all went in silence. The other posts were shut down, all functions to the main board now.

“We’re suiting,” Allison’s voice came to him over com out of breath. “I’m suited. Now what?”

“Got all kinds of service shafts down there. Pick one. Snug in and stay there—whatever happens. If they loot us and leave us, fine. If they take us off the ship—you stay put.”

“No way. No way, that.”

“You hear me. You get into a hole and wait it out. I know what I’m talking about and I know what I’m doing.”

“I’m not hiding in any—”

“Shut up, Reilly. Two of us is the maximum risk on this and I picked my risk… two of us of Curran’s type and mine—looks like smugglers. You want to get Deirdre and Neill killed, you just come ahead up here. You got the hard part down there, I know, but for God’s sake do it and don’t louse it up. Please, Reilly, think it through. That ship’s a Mazianni carrier. They have maybe three thousand troops on that thing. Do what I tell you and make the others do it. We got a chance. They don’t hang around after a hit. Maybe you can do something; maybe there’re people left at Venture. Maybe other ships coming in here—If nothing else, they may leave.—And Reilly—you listening to me?”

“I’m hearing you.”

“Comp access code’s in my cabin. Top drawer.”

“Hang you, Stevens.”

“Sandor. It’s Sandor Kreja.”

Silence from the other side. He could hear her breathing, soft panting as with some kind of exertion.

“You’ll be taking water with you,” he said. “You don’t use that suit oxygen unless you have to. You might have to last a day or so in there. Now shut that com down and keep that flock of yours quiet, hear?”

“Got you.”

He cut the acceleration entirely. The stress cut out; and with equal suddenness his contact with Allison went out. He felt cold, worked his hands to bring the circulation back to them.

He had it planned now, all of it, calm and reasoned. He looked up as Curran came back, out of breath and disheveled. “Just talked to Allison,” Sandor said. “They’re going into the service shafts and staying put. I gave her the comp code. You keep your mouth shut and swallow that temper; we’re going to get boarded and we’ve got no choices. You’re my number two, you don’t know anything, we’ve got a military cargo and we’ve run together since Viking. We’re running contraband gold and we’d run anything else that paid.”

Curran nodded, no arrogance at all, but a plain sober look that well enough reckoned what they were doing… So here’s the good in the man, Sandor said to himself, in the strange quiet of the moment. He’s got sense.

He turned a look to the screens. The com light was flashing.

“Belt in,” he said to Curran. “They’re coming on.”

There was the muted noise and shock of lockto. Allison lay still in the light G of their concealment, in absolute dark, felt Deirdre move slightly, a touch against her suit, and Neill was back there behind Deirdre. Her fingers rested on the butt of one of the ship’s three guns—they had gotten that from the locker… taken two and left one, in the reckoning that any boarders might suspect a completely empty weapons locker. Likewise the suits: two were left hanging. They must have done something about the cabins topside, she reckoned; they must have.

A second crash that resounded close at hand: and that was the lock working. Allison shivered, an adrenalin flutter that made her leg jerk; Deirdre could feel it, likely, which sent a rush of shame after it. It would not stop. She wanted to do something; and on the other hand she was cowardly, glad to be where she was.

And Curran and Stevens up there—Sandor. Kreja. She chased the name through her mind, and it meant nothing to her, nothing she had known. Curran and Sandor. They thought they were going to die. Both of them. And she had followed orders because she was blank of ideas, out of her depth. Like hiding in her cabin while her unit tried to settle things with the man who had title to the ship. Like not knowing answers, and taking too much advice. She had a new perspective on herself, hiding, shivering in the dark while she threw a cousin and a man she had slept over with to the Mazianni, men who would keep their mouths shut and protect them down here—

Not for the ship, not for the several million lousy credit ship, but for what a ship was, and the lives it still contained, down here in the dark.

Another sound, eventually, the passage of someone through the corridors, not far away, sound carried clear enough into the pressurized service shafts, into her amplified pickup. They could come out behind the invaders, maybe cut them down with their pathetic two handguns if surprise was on their side—But a thousand troops to follow—what could they do but get themselves hauled down by the survivors?

She added it up, the logic of it, a third and fourth time, and every time Stevens/Sandor came out right. He knew exactly what he was doing. And had always known that she did not. She lay there, breathing the biting cold air that passed through her suit’s filters, with a discomfort she did not dare stir about to relieve, and added up the sum of Allison Reilly, which was mostly minuses— No substance at all, no guts; and it was no moment to try to prove something. Too late for proofs. She had to lie here and take orders and do something right. Grow up, she told herself. Think. And save everything you can.

They were topside now, the invaders. Suddenly she began thinking with peculiar clarity—what they would have done, leaving some behind to secure the passage between the ship, some to guard the lift. Going out there would mean a firefight and three dead Dubliners.

That did no good. She started thinking down other tracks. Like saving Lucy, which was for starters on a debt, and hoping that the most epic liar she had ever met could con the Mazianni themselves.

He had a fine survival sense, did Stevens/Kreja. Supposing the Mazianni left him and Curran in one piece-Supposing that, they might need help. Fast.

Her foot started going to sleep. The numbness spread up her leg, afflicted the arm she was lying on. Holding her head up was impossible, and she let it down against the surface of the shaft, found a way to accommodate her neck by resting her temple just so against the helmet padding. Small discomforts added up, absorbed her attention with insignificant torments. The air that came through the filters was cold enough to sting her nose, her face, her eyes when she had them open. The numbness elsewhere might be the cold. She could lose a foot that way, if the heating failed somewhere and that was the deep cold that had sent that leg numb.

She kept her eyes shut and waited, let the numbness spread as long as she dared, felt Deirdre move, perhaps because Neill had moved, and took the chance to shift to the other side.

No communication from the other two. Wait, she had told them. And they still waited, not using the lights, saving all the power they could.

Then came the sound of the lift working, and her heart pounded afresh. Whatever was done up there was done: they were leaving. Or someone was. She heard the tread of heavy boots in the corridor, the working of the lock.

If they were alone up there, if they were able—there were the suit phones. Sandor and Curran would try to contact them—

Then they started to move, a hard kick that dislodged all of them, converted the shaft in which they were lying into a downward chute.

Neill stopped them: a sudden pileup of suited bodies against the bulkhead seal a short drop down, Neill on the bottom and herself and Deirdre in a compressing tangle of limbs, weighed down harder and harder until there was no chance to straighten out a bent back or a twisted limb. The gun was still in her hand: she had that. But her head was bent back in the helmet that was jammed against something, and it was hard to breathe against the weight

They’ll break the cargo loose, she thought, ridiculous concern: they were in tow, boosted along in grapple by a monster warship, and it could get worse. Maybe four G; a thing like that might pull an easy ten. Maybe more, with its internal compensations. Her mind rilled with inanities, and all the while she felt for hands— Deirdre’s caught hers and squeezed; she knew Deirdre’s light grip; and Neill—she could not tell which limbs were his or whether he was unconscious on the bottom of the heap—O God, get a suit ripped in this cold and he was in trouble. She had picked their spot in the shaft with an eye to reorientation, but she had not reckoned on any such startup; had never in her life felt the like. Her pulse pounded in cramped extremities. A weight sat on her chest. It went on, and she grew patient in it, trying to reconcile herself to long misery—Then it stopped as abruptly as it had begun and Lucy’s own rotation returned orientation to the shaft wall. She crawled over onto a side, chanced the suit light. Deirdre’s went on, underlighting a disheveled face; and then Neill’s, a face to match Deirdre’s. She gave them the Steady sign.

*Station, Deirdre said.

*Affirmative, she answered. There was no other sane answer. *They have the station.

*Question, Neill said. *Question. Get out of here.

*Stay. She made the sign abrupt and final, doused her light The other lights went out.

Two hours, the MET suit clock informed her, a red digital glow when she punched it Two hours ten minutes forty-five seconds point six.

They might make the station in a few hours more. Might be boarded and searched and stripped of cargo. They might hijack the ship itself. She imagined hiding until they were weak with hunger, with never a chance to get at food, and then to have the ship start out from station again, with a Mazianni crew aboard, and themselves trapped.

Or short of that, a search turning up cabins full of recent clothing, unlike the rest of Lucy’s oddments. Clothing with shamrock patches. And the Mazianni would know what they had—a key to a prize richer than Mazianni had ever ambushed. They knew too much.

The armored troops moved about the bridge, looking over this and that, and the one unarmored officer sat the number one post, doing nothing, meddling with a great deal. Sandor was aware of him, past the ceramics and plastics bulk of the trooper who held a rifle in his direction and Curran’s; he sat where they had set him, on a couch aftmost in the downside lounge, and waited, while troopers got up into the core, and visited the holds. And all the while he kept thinking about the acceleration that had for a time pressed them all against the bulkhead, and how service shafts running fore and aft could become pits that could break bone. Allison had thought of that; surely she had taken some kind of precaution. The sweat beaded on his temples and ran, one trail and another, betraying the calm he tried to keep. Australia, the stencilled letters said on the armor of the man/woman who stood nearest: and a number, meaningless to him. The trooper had no face, only reflective plastic that cast back his own diminished image, a blond man with his back against the wall; Curran’s reflection behind him, with another trooper’s back—both of them under the gun, Australia meant Tom Edger; meant Mazian’s second in command, of no gentle reputation. And he kept seeing the bridge as it had been in that first boarding—felt the ghost of the pain in the scar in his side; and the dead about him—He had let them board, he had, when all that he knew was against it. He understood that day finally, in a way he had never understood. He sat paralyzed, and trying to think, and his mind kept cycling back and back… staring down the rifle barrel that was aimed at his face.

No shots fired yet. No damage taken. They were limpeted to the belly of a monster, frame to frame; and he had never appreciated the power in the giant carriers until he felt it slam a loaded freighter’s mass along with its own into a multiple G acceleration. They could not have outrun it… had gained most of the time they had had simply in the delicate maneuvers that brought airlocks into synch. And maybe the Mazianni had been as patient as they had been because he had cooperated.

Thinking like that led to false security. He had a rifle muzzle in front of his face to deny it. He had time to notice intimate detail in the equipment, and still did not know if it had been this ship or Norway or still another that had caught Lucy/Le Cygne before. He had a sense of betrayal… outrage. Venture Station was doing nothing to stop what had happened: the station belonged to the Mazianni, was in their hands. A vast horror sat under the cracks in that logic, the suspicion that there were things even Alliance might not know, when they made an ex-Mazianni like Mallory the chief of their defense.

A military cargo, Mallory had said. A delivery to Venture, where Australia waited. Supplies—for allies? The thought occurred to him that a power like Alliance, which consisted of one world and one station—besides the Hinder Stars and the merchanters themselves—could be threatened by a power the size of the Mazianni… a handful of carriers that now came and went like ghosts through the nullpoints, struck and vanished. The Mazianni could take Pell.

Especially if Mallory had rethought her options and decided to go the other way.

A handful of independent merchanters, he reckoned, were not going to be allowed to go their way. There was no hope of that at all. And possibly the Mazianni had a use for a merchanter ship that was scheduled to return to Pell.

The focus of his gaze flicked between the gun and the Mazianni who worked over the controls. And when the man turned the seat and got up, he had a panicked notice what the question was.

The man moved up beside the trooper… for a moment the gun moved aside and came on target again. “I need the comp opened up,” the officer said. “You want to give it to me easy?”

“No,” Sandor said quietly. And something settled into place like an old habit. He took a deeper breath, found his mind working again. “I trade. Maybe run a little contraband here and there. I’ve dealt the far side of the law before this. And before I trade my best deal off, I’ll talk to Edger himself.”

“You know, I wouldn’t recommend that.”

“I’m not stupid. I don’t plan to die over a cargo. I figure we’re going to offload it at Venture. Figure maybe you’ve got that sewed up tight. Fine. You want the cargo—fine. I’m not anybody’s hero. Neither is my partner. I’ll talk to Edger and I’m minded to deal, you can figure that. Might work out something.”

The Mazianni studied him a long moment—a seam-faced pale man, the intruder onto Lucy, of indefinite age. He nodded slowly, with eyes just as dead. Sandor let it sink in, numb in his expectation that it was all prelude to a pounce… realized then to his own astonishment that the deal was taken. “We’ll go with that,” the Mazianni said, and walked back to controls.

Sandor looked up at the trooper’s faceplate—not for sight of that, but for a look at Curran without turning about; the Dubliner sat still, not a muscle moved. His own heart was beating double-time, a temptation to self-congratulation tempered by a calculation that the other side had an angle. Not stupid either, the Mazianni. Suddenly he reckoned that Mazianni and marginers must have similar reflexes, similar senses—living on the fringes of civilization, off the fat of others. It was like the unrolling of a chart laid out plain and clear; no enigmatic monsters out of his childhood—they were quite, quite like himself, out for profit and trade and unparticular how it came. Always the best advantage, the smart move—and the smart move at the moment was not taking apart the man with the comp key, the man with a ship that had Alliance papers and clearance to dock at Pell.

He knew how to play it then. What he had to trade. But it was not a question now of a scam, minor wounds on a vast corporation. He was not unimportant any more. And he earnestly wanted his obscurity back.

(Ross… got a problem, Ross. You got a tape that covers this one? I might save my crew. Curran… and Allison… Where’s right? Do we play it for the ship or for some station and people we don’t know; and how does anybody else figure in it when it’s our precious delicate selves in Mazianni hands?…) His mind drew pictures and he shoved them out again, preferring the gun in front of him to the images his mind could conjure.

He settled his mind, trusted himself to ingenuity. He was thinking again, and his blood was moving—like sex, this necessity to figure. No preconceptions, but a fair idea what the opposition would be after… a knowledge of all the angles.

He was still figuring when the ship dumped velocity—an interface dump that shocked his mind numb with the unexpectedness of it. Military maneuver, a brush with jumpspace with such suddenness he found a tremor in his muscles—Curran swore softly, almost the first word Curran had spoken. Sandor looked that way— met the Dubliner’s eyes that for once showed fright. No gesture between them: nothing—Curran was too smart for it. He had picked well, he thought, another matter of instinct. There was no soft center to Curran Reilly. What made them enemies made the Dubliner a good wall at his back. Not a flicker, beyond that startlement

A shock then that rang through the hull—and Sandor glanced instinctively in its direction, his heart lurching: but they had ungrappled, nothing worse. They were loose, and Lucy was under her own helm, with a stranger at the controls.

They were headed in to dock. He felt the small shifts of stress and focused his eyes beyond his guard, where he could see the glimmer of screens without making out the detail.

They were headed for a reckoning of one kind and the other. He felt his own nerves twitch in response to this and that move the ship made under foreign hands—felt a ridiculous anxiety that they might come in rough, as if a scrape was the worst they had to worry over.

It was rough, a jolting into dock that sent a shudder through his soul. He swore, for the guard to hear, but not for the man who had done it, whose good will he wanted, if it could be had.