Rimrunners

CHAPTER 27

She wasn't navigating well, was just about fit to lie there in the seat at number three boards, breaking a half-dozen regs—Bernie'd die, she thought, sipping a cold beer NG had gotten her out of Services, beer and not the vodka, because beer seemed more like food and there was more of it. Her hands would hurt if she weren't halfway numb, her back did hurt, she was afraid to take one of Fletcher's pills, as tired as she was, and she had the feeling a lot of things were going to hurt, if she sat still any time at all.

But NG was there. That was what she wanted most. NG was still speaking to her, he was standing there against the counter-edge with this desperate look, like he'd earnestly like things to make sense more than they did.

There was that lock downside, that was an option, one he'd risked his neck on.—"We've got a way out," he'd whispered to her, before he went down to Services for the beer. "It'll work."

And she'd said, not sure she wasn't wrong: "Not yet."

"When? When you're stuck topside?"

"Don't do it," she'd said. "Don't do it. It's not that simple. Something's wrong out there. Something is wrong, I got it listening to com up there."

NG didn't look happy. But he listened to her. He leaned against the counter now and said, "Better?"

"Lot," she said, and he just stood there. Waiting.

Because she said so.

Man, you never asked, did you, what ship I come from, what I've done, where I been? You never said about yourself, either.

So what're you thinking? That you can throw all that away? But past is never past, man, past is, that's all; all you can ever get at is now and will-be.

You find that so, out there, where you been?

I damn sure have.

She found the beer hard to hold onto: it took concentration to keep her fingers closed on the cup, she was that close to going out.

Crew was going to find out what she was, and there had to be a few with old grudges—on a spook ship, probably a lot of them. Terribly dirty trick, bringing NG out of his hole, getting him halfway acceptable, and then having it turn out she'd lied to everybody—

Where's that leave him? God—

But NG waited, he sat there on this ship that saner crew like Parker and Merrill were complaining about and ready to duck out on, the whole crew ready to mutiny if they hadn't done it already out there—and they were sitting still on her say-so, too, she didn't know why. They might be worried about the consequences of guessing wrong, but if NG decided to go eetee he didn't always think five minutes down the line, damn sure he didn't play team with anybody—

—didn't used to, at least.

Cup slipped. She clamped down numb fingers, got it to her mouth, drank off the last couple of mouthfuls of it and let her arm rest then, just staring at him.

Didn't ask me what I'm going to do.

Can't tell me anything either—what's going on out there, where crew is…

"Merrill and Parker," Goddard's voice said over general com. "Report to dockside."

She jerked awake, running that through her hearing again. Merrill and Parker were hauling themselves up from their pile of blankets over in the corner, scared-looking.

"What in hell?" Mike Parker asked, looking in her direction as if she might be holding some secret.

"Dunno," she said, trying to get the chair tilted forward, trying to get up, with NG's help.

But Parker went to the com over at the entry station and tried to ask Goddard why and what-for and just what in hell was going on, anyway.

Goddard just repeated the order, told them get their stuff, get, go.

"What about Yeager and NG?" Parker asked, God save him, mad and keeping after it. "Do they get a relief, sir?—Have we got some kind of problem on this ship?"

"They keep to stations," the answer came back.

Parker kept trying. Goddard just shut him down. Parker looked at both of them, said, "Son of a bitch!"

She held onto NG's shoulder, feet and hands so numb she couldn't stand up, except NG was providing the balance sense.

"I'm going to ask questions when I get out there," Mike Parker said.

But she stood there thinking, Questions don't matter, then, what crew thinks doesn't matter, or they wouldn't turn Merrill and Parker out, now that they're through with them, they know too much—what's going on in here—

She thought, We're the last, aren't we? Fitch's personal favorites…

As Parker and Merrill got themselves out the door before somebody changed the orders. Footsteps outside got lost in the noise of the pumps. In a minute or less the lock cycled, and they were alone in Loki's downside.

"We can still get out of here," NG said, holding onto her.

"They'd kill us," she said. That was the only sense she knew. "We got no defense for running. I don't know what the hell's going on out there, but something is, something is dead wrong—"

Bad choice of words. NG got her to a chair arm, got her to sit down. She put her arms around his neck, he put his arms around her and she hung there with her head spinning.

"I tell you," she said, "they're all crazy."

But she wasn't as scared as she ought to be for a second or two, wasn't half as scared as made sense, maybe because she'd seen more than made sense, topside, and it was all still rattling around—

Fitch, being civil—

Fitch, saying to Goddard, one supposed, No answer—

Goddard, sending one of their two Systems engineers and their only bona fide on-duty machinist out onto the docks to whatever trouble was supposedly going on out there, and leaving the ship their two gold-plated problems…

Three, counting Fitch—

Four, if you threw in that sonuvabitch Goddard. A Systems man, a scan operator, an ex-Marine tac-squad sergeant and the mainday first officer—

"Goddard's longscan," she mumbled against NG's shoulder. "Goddard's a longscan operator, for God's sake—"

NG looked her in the face.

Understood her, she thought.

Scared. He ought to be.

"If we get a warning," she said, "you get the hell off this ship. You hear me? We got two armor-rigs up there, working just fine. You got those hard-suits in that locker out there. Get one in here. If we get an alert you get it on and if we get a strike warning you get the hell off this ship, off the dockside, period, you don't stop to think. At that point, nobody's going to care. Fitch won't care. Things'll be too busy."

Black of space, gaping behind a seal-window. Whirling paper, whirling debris, trail of dust and freezing air going out a hole so fast you didn't even see most of it, just—

—felt the explosion, felt it in the dark, felt it when you shut your eyes at night, when you got too tired and you were by yourself and you started remembering—

"You think it is a ship?" NG said.

"I damn well think it's a ship. They want that armor fixed, that's why I'm here, and they don't trust me worth shit. There never was any problem with station. That's why Fitch can talk about six hours, twenty-four hours, they know it's out there, they know how fast it's coming. Fitch was talking to somebody, saying Don't answer. We sit at this dock like a merchanter with a problem, not saying a thing. Spook tactic long as I've known anything."

"Till they get a clear look at us. And that's damn far out. We're a sitting target and they won't care about the fact there's a thousand-odd innocent people out there—"

"You don't think we can run. You think the ship absolutely can't do it."

"Fifty/fifty," NG said. There was this look in his eyes, man remembering, maybe, what human beings tranked down to forget in jump. "Don't know. I've worked on it till I'm blind and I don't know. You get a deformation when you drop out, we've tried to write a program that goes back to the boards to tell the difference, but fifty/fifty the sensors are just screwed up—We told Wolfe, no guarantees, run low mass, minimal stress—"

Detail just muddled up in her skull, the whole room kept turning around, she only knew he was scared, and she was, and beyond her not knowing any answer, there might not be any answer.

Couldn't bluff, NG was right, couldn't depend on any Fleet ship not firing on them only because they were sitting at a station dock—because they weren't dealing with anybody on either side who had an overwhelming lot to lose. The Fleet didn't: couldn't hold a place like Thule, just didn't have the ships. Even the Alliance didn't care about Thule except as metal that had to be junked; and the people were all Q-zone refugees Alliance wished it didn't have. Only some Pell lawyer was likely to complain if Thule got blown, but it didn't help them after the fact.

Antique station. Nothing to hold onto.

"One damn pump," she remembered suddenly. Thule dock. Cheese puffs. Ritterman. Herself and Nan Jodree standing in the Registry watching the screen. "One pump at this station that can handle a starship. We're sitting at it. More than that—our tank can drain this station dry and it takes the skimmers weeks to refill it. If that's what's going on out there, if there is a ship, if its tanks are low as ours and they blow us—they've blown the pump, they've blown what we've drunk down, they're stuck here—it's more than forcing us out, they've got to take this ship."

That bastard Wolfe knew our chances when he brought us in here. Tanks nearly dry. Major mechanical with the drive. No way to run.

So you pull into station, you drink down all the available fuel and you defy the sonuvabitch on your track to come after you and take it back.

We're supposed to stop a station boarding with two armor-rigs and Loki's guns, dead broadside?

Fuckin' hell!