Tripoint

Chapter Eleven

TWO HOURS TWENTY MINUTES. The whole difference. The whole… damned… difference between Corinthian’s system exit and Sprite’s entry, the height and depth of Pell Star system apart.

Nothing to do at that point but to continue on in, with Sprite running full-loaded as she was. Nothing to do but maintain a quiet calm, a sweetness to the offered sympathy of cousins and, of course, Lydia. Less likely… sympathy from Mischa, whose expression of regret had a certain lack of conviction, but Mischa had at least made the gesture.

“We tried, Marie. All we could do.”

It was all they could have done, a heartbreakingly hard run through Tripoint, everyone on long hours and short food and sleep. Tempers had frayed, understandably so. And there had been recriminations about missing Corinthian.

Not from her. And they waited for her opinion. Maybe with bated breath.

Spirits aboard had picked up when their cargo sold during their run-in toward station, no languishing on the trade boards while the ship ran up dock-time, no waiting to sell this part and that lot of cans… Dee Biomedical bought the whole lot sight unseen, the publishing data-feed, the biomedicals, neobiotics, and biomaterials, with damage exceptions, which, Marie knew from her boards, there were none: every one of the cans came in registering, constantly talking to the regulation devices.

Not one can even questionable. And profit clear—Pell had no tariff on biomedicals of Cyteen origin, when Pell could get them.

Faces started to smile. People started to be pleasant to each other in the corridors. The seniors who’d been fuming mad about transshipping the government contract now thought that, of course, it had all been their idea.

But ship activity at dock? Pell didn’t have that kind of information available to an inbound ship. Get it at the Trade Office once you dock.

Information on Thomas Bowe-Hawkins? His mother wanted to know?

Oh, there was a record of that. Listed with exiting crew on Corinthian. And listed with returning crew.

Somebody using Tom’s passport, she thought, but she kept that to herself, and kept the information to herself until Sprite docked, grappled to, and opened its ports at 10 Green, where Dee Imports had can transports waiting.

Then she was off to the Customs Office so fast the deck smoked.

Well, yes, Tom’s passport had been used. Well, yes, there had to be a credit record of transactions on station, but she had to get a court order. And, yes, they knew which agents had been assigned at Corinthian’s dock, and, well, yes, there was no actual regulation against an individual inquiry with the agent, although they didn’t give out names.

Her pocket-com nagged at her. She ignored it.

“I’m his mother, “ she said to the customs officer. “I have copies of his papers.”

“The boy is over eighteen. By Alliance law, he’s an adult.”

“Do you have kids?”

“Look, Ms. Hawkins…”

She didn’t raise her voice. She made it very quiet. “This boy was out drinking when that ship cleared port. We’re a Family ship. Check us out. I want to know does that passport, used exiting Corinthian, still have the right picture.”

“You’re asking if it was stolen.”

“Yes. “

The agent vanished into inner offices. The pocket-corn kept beeping. She thumbed it on.

“Yes, dammit!”

It was Mischa, asking did she need help.

“Not actually,” she said, and flipped the display on her handheld again, to market display, mere mind-filler, something to look at and think about before she went mad.

Mischa chattered at her.

“Yeah,” she said, “nice. No, I don’t need help. You’re driving me crazy, Mischa. I’m busy here. All right?”

She thumbed the switch and cut him off. Didn’t care what he was saying. The agent came back with a woman in a more expensive suit. “We’re talking about a stolen passport?”

“This—” She laid the ID on the counter. “—is a duplicate of my son’s ID. I want to know, does the agent remember this face?”

“Come into the office, Ms…”

“Hawkins. “ She passed the counter, she sat in a nicer office, she waited. She drank free coffee and entered searches on the hand-held for low-mass goods, and sat there for forty-three minutes before the woman in the suit brought a uniformed customs agent into the office.

“Ms. Hawkins. Officer Lee. Officer Lee is the one that read the passport through at board-call. Officer Lee, this is the young man’s mother.”

The officer handed the ID to her. “I do remember him,” the officer said. “He’d forgotten his passport. The captain came down to be sure he got ID’d. It was that boy, Ms. Hawkins, very well dressed, in the company of a pretty young woman and a man. Came up in a taxi. I thought then, that cost them. But the boy didn’t act upset, except about the passport. Went right to the captain, he and the girl. They walked in together.”

“How did he get out there without a passport?”

“Happens. He went out with a group, should’ve gotten it from the officer, once they’d cleared customs, but he didn’t. Captain said he hadn’t missed it til the board-call, and he panicked.”

“This man with them.”

“Rough-looking. Cheerful fellow. Drunk as a lord. Papers perfectly in order. Cook’s mate.”

“No visible threat.”

The agent went very sober for a moment. “You mean was he drafted back? Didn’t look to be. The young man spoke for himself, apologized about the passport, had a new haircut, clothes, brand new duffle, everything first class. Met the captain on friendly terms.”

“Ms. Hawkins. Would you like to sit down?”

Out of nowhere a hand grabbed her arm. She didn’t need support. She shrugged it off, took a deep breath, took out her wallet and managed to get the ID into the slot.

“Sit down,” the woman said.

She did. The agent offered to get her water. She said yes. She wasn’t through asking questions and they were distressed on her account, moving to get her whatever she wanted. “I want the credit record. If my son was on this station, I want to know who paid, where he slept…”

The woman looked doubtful. The damn com beeped again, and she cut it off, completely. “I have to know,” she said. “This is my son. “

“Just a minute,” the woman said, and went somewhere. Officer Lee came back with the water and sat and asked her stupid questions, trying to distract her. She kept her calm, played the part. It was maybe thirty minutes before the woman came back, looking grim, and said there hadn’t been any credit record, but that the young woman, the passport number he’d been with on customs exit, had run up big bills at the fanciest sleepover on Pell. Big bills at a clothing store. At Pell’s fanciest restaurant. Dinner for two. Lot of drinks.

“I see,” she said, a little numb, it was true. Maybe a little grey around the edges. But it did answer things.

“You might check station mail. He might have left a message.”

“I have, thank you, Ms…”

“Raines.”

“Ms. Raines. Thank you very much. “ She shook hands. She was polite. She thanked Officer Lee.

She came to herself maybe half an hour later, in front of a shop window, and didn’t know where she was until she looked at the dock signs opposite.

She had to get out of this port. She had to find that son of a bitch. Forget Tom. A nice-looking girl, fancy clothes, damned… shallow… kid. Probably scared, probably saw a cheap way out, just go along with it, wasn’t too uncomfortable, he had a lot of money, Corinthian would give it to him, because Austin wanted to get to her. Austin wasn’t going to drop the boy in any port, wasn’t going to sell him out to the Fleet, no need. Tom had sold himself, for a fancy bed and fancy clothes and the best restaurants and a girl who’d do whatever it took to keep him and keep his mouth shut.

Damn him. You could see the boy’s point of view. Easier to be courted than shake his fist in Austin’s face and take the hits.

Easier to be let loose dockside with a pretty girl and more money than Sprite ever allotted its junior crew. Easier to be plied with lies and promises. Austin could be a charming bastard. A very charming bastard, give or take that the rough edge wasn’t a put-on, far from it.

And give or take that the man’s taste in bedmates ran to whores. That detail wasn’t going to impact Tom’s little bubble too seriously.

Hell!

She went to a bar. She ordered a drink, not her habit. She flipped on the hand-held, drank, and stared at the meaningless scroll of figures. She couldn’t leave this port until they’d offloaded. That was happening, as fast as the cans could roll out.

And that bastard on Corinthian was on his way back through Tripoint.

She’d suspected Tripoint was the dark hole where Corinthian pursued its private business, the off-the-record trades with God knew what agencies—it was a vast, gravitationally disturbed space, with no station to provide an information-flow: a dozen ships could lie there, silent, absolutely impossible to spot if you didn’t know exactly where they were; ships could move, and the place was so vast the presence-wave wouldn’t reach you for hours… you didn’t know what might be watching you.

But Corinthian hadn’t waited on this leg—they’d kited through and been gone by the time they’d come through.

Expecting trouble, it was clear.

Time-wise, Corinthian was in hyperspace now. A ship that followed them for the next month, real-time, would exist there right along with them until Corinthian dropped out again, and the vector was Tripoint. Again. Where Corinthian had business to do.

But Sprite couldn’t catch them. The gods of physics afforded no chance to one freighter to overtake another with Corinthian’s head start—unless Sprite was running empty, with outright nothing in the holds when she went into hyperspace.

Tell the Family they were going back to Viking empty? That, having cleared one chancy low-mass, high-value deal at Pell, for which they’d had to dip into bank reserves, they were going to throw away everything they’d just gained at enormous risk—and run empty back to Viking-via-Tripoint?

No way. No way in hell. She could muster the votes against Mischa on the matter of the Pell run, because she could threaten the sure economic disaster of her quitting, against the promise of profit. She couldn’t get anywhere in a vote by demanding a disaster.

She swallowed a mouthful of ice-melt and vodka and did a different-criteria search through the market.

Pell… was the gateway to Earth. To arts. To culture.

Books. Zero mass. Vids. Software. Distribution licenses. Always high-priced because ships bid on them. But ships only bid so much, usually scooping up what they could get without a fight, because it was a chancy market, riding local fads, and the willingness of some station-side promoter to take it off your hands where you were going… so if you were willing to gamble big that you knew tastes where it was going… ordinarily you could get it, the info-market being quiet, low-tension, not subject to big bids from ships that better understood the market for frozen foods and machine parts.

She took out her stylus, punched the keys you couldn’t accidentally access with bare fingers, and money moved.

Data moved.

Data flooded into Sprite’s black-box info-storage. Permits, licenses. Credit. Text. Images. Patents. Two solid hours, while she sipped fruit-juice and vodka, of high-speed input—in which the info-market accelerated, picked up interest on some items—then hyped into a wild surge of activity.

She traded back some books, some vids, snapped up rights less useful to ships that didn’t reach deep in Union territory: license to reproduce at Union ports and points further, exclusive rights down routes reachable from Unionside—prices ballooned as ships bid to get a speculative commodity they regularly dabbled in, rights they routinely bid on, ships and stationside interests battling each other for what somebody unknown was going for in huge quantities. The whole info-market soared as station-side speculators and automatic trading programs saw a rising price and a limited availability and went for it. Feeding frenzy set in, sent prices crazy. She sat it out for fifteen minutes and sipped her drink while the market computers registered a flurry of trades.

Four ships and one publishing house released major holdings to profit-take on the market, she grabbed it all and resold, bought hand and fist on the panic, and the market dropped and rose and ticked into stability as the regulators slammed the lid on.

She keyed Sprite for departure at m2330h, then, scant time to get the Dee Imports cans offloaded and get the tanks filled.

After which, she turned on her pocket-corn and told Mischa they were in count for departure in under twenty-four hours, beep everybody who was out.

“Marie, “ Mischa said calmly, “where are you?” Less calmly: “—Are you in some bar?”

“Noisy? I said 24 hours, Mischa, do you copy? We’re bought up. We’re going. I’ve made a profit just sitting here and logged us for departure. You can check the schedule board.”

“Marie. We aren’t loaded. “

“Zero-mass. Publishing rights. Tons of publishing rights. We’re bought and loaded. It’s in Sprite’s databanks right now, didn’t you notice that little light flicker? Every cent we have in credit. It’s time-critical and I suggest we pull out the second the tanks are filled.”

“Damn you! Get your ass back on this ship, Marie! Dump that infoshit back on the market, resell and get our money back! You’re not pulling this!”

“Mischa, sweet, we’ve made money, as stands. There’s been a modest little trade war in the last few hours and the market’s gone under regulatory controls, now. There’s really no way to make anything short-term under a regulatory, you know that. If we sell now, we sell at a loss. So we’d better make that schedule, Mischa. Dear. It’ll work.”

“This is going to a vote, Marie. Your post is going to a vote!”

“I’ll call yours to one, too, sweet. Think about it. I’ve made us money in this port. I’ll make us money where we’re going.”

“And where’s that? What area’s this damn infodump valid for?”

Mischa’s grammar was going.

“Marie?”

“Cyteen, via Viking, via hell, brother. It’s what we have to do. And speed counts. Trust me.”

—ii—

WAVES UPON WAVES, SCARY climb into nothing and nowhere.

Hand brushed Tom’s brow. Voice, ever so far, whispered to him.

His heart started beating too fast. Colors flared and ran like dyes across his vision. It was Saby he was with. Saby’s bed. He could feel her presence by him.

Feel the hovering presence, too, then a change in pitch of the surface he lay on. A finger brushed his cheek.

“You hear me, Tommy? No good shamming, I know you do.”

“Leave me alone,” he tried to say.

“Person’s truly sorry, Tommy-lad. “ For a while the touch went away, and came back again. The universe quaked. Ran colors. Tilted.

“Stop it, dammit. Saby’s. Saby’s place, here.”

“Yeah, sorry, Tommy-person. Didn’t come to devil you. Came to be sure you were all right. “ Air whispered against his forehead. A touch followed. “Gets lonely, in the dark. Gets cold. You know it. They don’t. You doing all right?”

“Yeah.”

“My fault you waked. Sex’ll do it sometimes.—And hell if I wanted Christian to ship you out to Earth—selfish me. I tried my best to warn you, Tommy-person, short of all the trouble you had. Tried to make you hear me. But you went out with him all the same. And now look. Saby’s got you. I lost out again.”

He felt the loneliness, and the cold. Then… just felt/ smelled/saw the colors a while. And vast, terrifying silence. He tried to move, then. He couldn’t feel things. Couldn’t tell up from down. He leaned into space, flinched back toward solid limits, and thought he was falling.

Arms were there. Caught him. Hands showed him where level was. “Tommy-person,” a voice said. “Sillyass. Easy. Easy. You took the trank. It’s still in your system, and I can’t watch you all the time. Break your silly neck, you will, or your nose. Lie still. Lie still. Enjoy it. Go with it… like sex… you got to go with it. You got to like it.—Deep breath. The willies will stop.”

He lay still—he thought he was lying down, Saby lying near him, but whether it was light or dark didn’t seem relevant to his eyes. He saw, somehow, or something like. The brain kept shifting things around or the walls truly ran in streams of color. Things just were. Couldn’t see Capella, then shivered at a strangeness as her hand met his body.

“Where were you?” he tried to ask.

“Upside, mostly,” Capella said. “The bridge. Everybody’s cold, everybody’s still. Don’t worry, I won’t touch you, just a sit-a-while, just a voice.”

“Yeah,” he said. He thought he could see and feel her, then, sitting on the edge of the bed, elbows on her knees, depressing the mattress.

“Yeah, well, once you start to, you know, be aware, the trank’s real chancy. You’re a little disconnected. Distances go down a tunnel, don’t they?”

“Long. Long tunnel,” he said, because it was. That very well described it. He was astonished and relieved that someone else could see what he thought was his own senses out of control. “Cold. “ He didn’t remember walking. Didn’t know where he was, just that he was on his feet in a wildly tilting universe, but Capella’s hand found his arm. He was going to be sick, and then he wasn’t. Was just lying on his bed trying to be steadily solid.

“Relax. Easy. I got you. I won’t let you fall.”

Two deep breaths.

“You can tell, you know. The ones that fight it. The ones that can hear you. More can than do, if you understand.”

“Don’t. Understand.”

“Yeah. Easy. Don’t know why it’s cold. Metabolism, I guess. Maybe using up more ‘n we take in. You’ll drop a few kilos. Dehydrate. You got to drink, Tommy. Brought you a raft of the green stuff. Drink up.”

Didn’t want to. Wasn’t tracking real well. But you learned, if somebody said drink, you drank, no matter the taste.

Didn’t taste green. Tasted purple. Orange. Smelled blue. Stuff ran in front of his eyes. Colors made curls like water and oil in free-fall. Made you sick awhile. But it went away.

“Better?”

“Uh-huh,” he agreed. It sounded reasonable. Anything would have gotten his agreement, echoing as it did, being color, and taste. It echoed on for a long, frightening while.

“We got a little problem out there,” Capella said, after a long silence. He felt that sinking of the edge that told him most surely Capella was there, like a depression in space itself. “I think now there’s maybe three of us. But the instruments are screwed, you can’t tell, sometimes you get echoes off the interface, you see yourself. Lot of echoes in the sheet, sometimes from clear to hell and gone, you never don’t know where they come from. Maybe not even human, who knows?”

“Don’t understand.”

“Ships, Tommy-love. Ships in the same relevance of space-time. When the Fleet would jump, several ships together, all space’d go crazy.”

“Trouble?” He couldn’t figure what she was saying. Couldn’t figure if she was asking help. Couldn’t stand up. “What do you want?”

“Talk. Just talk to me. Give me a voice, Tommy. I’ve heard the music too long.”

He didn’t understand about the music. But maybe that was what he heard, too, when he thought about it, you could call it music, a deep, deep sound, that went through the bones.

He heard it deeper and deeper. It might have been another time. When seemed irrelevant as where. Capella raked a hand through her hair, looked distractedly, desperately at the wall, the overhead, said, quietly, “Something’s screaming out there. Hear it? Honest freighter passing, what it most sounds like, but I don’t bet on it. We can fake ID, too, leastwise for a ship. So can Patrick. Sumbitch.”

“Who?”

“Patrick. Mazianni spook. One of Edger’s skuz, and Edger is not our friend. Chased us out of Pell, Patrick did, and this trading dump is lost to us, Tommy-person, no question he’ll find it. Everything we can leave at Tripoint is loss—if not to him, to the cops: one or the other’ll get it for sure. But, problem is, we can’t leave the system without offloading—we unquestionably got to shed mass somehow—can’t outrun this bastard otherwise. He’s on us, and there’s this very important little card… Shit, shit, shit!”

Shivery feeling. Like… things happened again and again, bump, bump, against the nerves, like the same colors, the same events, kept coming back, right through him, waves of sound bouncing off and coming back, off and back, heartbeat trying to synch with the waves, pressure in the ears, behind the eyes, in the brain-stem.

Touch came at his shoulder. Hard grip. Painful.

“Serious stuff. Tom. I want you to listen to me now, deadly serious. I want you to remember it.”

Things came and went. Covers whispered. Bed tilted. Capella leaned close. “We dump down hard, and we’re mass-heavy to start with. So you keep those belts on.”

“Yeah.”

“Dockers are going to earn their pay, now, no question. Unload fast as we can. I thought maybe we could skim on through, maybe make Viking, loaded as we are, but this sum-bitch is good. He’s on us, not overjumping, and we can’t make it: if he adds his mass to ours in hyperspace, he can push us faster on the exit than we can brake with the mass we’re hauling, that’s what it adds up to—send us right to Viking and right into hungry, hot old Ep-Eridani.”

“You sure?” Falling into a sun… wasn’t how he wanted to go.

Colors came and ran in disturbed sheets. Space warped and twisted.

“Tommy, I’ve worked it every way I can think of and I can’t drop us far enough out that we can do any damn thing but fall. He can stop, but us, with all the mass, one way we end up plasma and sunbeams and the other we go outbound with no fuel. Patrick-bastard’s given me no choice.”

“Shit…”

“No, now, listen, Tom. You listen. I got to drop us in solid at Tripoint, if I can fake him once. Use our mass to throw him, here. In one scenario, I won’t throw him far enough and he’ll be in our laps. In the one I want, we’ll buy that time we need to dump mass. Depends on if Patrick reads my intention to drop us out, and if Patrick-bastard knows to a navigational precision just where that supply dump is. I do. “

Shook his head. “Can’t do. “ Didn’t like what he was hearing. Didn’t know you could control anything in hyperspace… he knew there were things you could do right at the edge of jump or drop, but… this… God…

“Bet our lives I can. Have to. Patrick’s out there. And I can’t wake Austin up to tell him how things in the universe have changed, you read me, Tommy-person? You got to read me, Tommy, pay attention.”

“I hear.”

“You got to tell Austin it’s no doublecross. He doesn’t trust me. And this time he’s got to. This old hulk sits in the dark out there, you follow me? And it’s got stuff inside for us to take and it’s got loading racks we can offput stuff to, real fast.”

“That’s what those cans were, at Viking.”

“Old, old cans, from the War. Salvage, legitimate salvage, if it didn’t come from the Fleet. And ordinarily another ship comes to this old hulk and gets the cans we leave in trade, and takes our cans to somewhere else. But this isn’t ordinary. Patrick’s not our breed. You want to say Mazianni, Patrick’s Mazianni, no question, not Fleet, Tommy. Not our friend. He’s a damn pirate, he’ll have found our old hulk before we’re done, he’s armed a helluva lot heavier than he looks, and there’s one way out of this thing—put a certain key in that old wreck and give it the right code and she’ll let you aboard and credit your offload. Give her another one and she remembers things she’s otherwise forgot. Got to have that card in the slot and that message input, Tommy. If Patrick comes at us, and he will, got to have that message input. Then that old hulk’s our friend. Then she’ll give us authorizations we got to have, bottom line, got to have to survive. There’s a port we can go to, trust me on this.”

What other port? he asked himself. Out of Tripoint there was Mariner, or Viking, cheapest vector out, or there was Pell, priciest, fuel-wise.

But he was following most of it. At least… the cargo part. The mass they had to get rid of before they came in at Viking velocity-high and fuel-short, aimed at the sun.

And he believed there was something out there dogging them in hyperspace: he felt something he couldn’t explain.

But moral argument and promises of deliverance from a person he didn’t half trust himself? Not so easy.

He felt Capella straighten his collar.

“Tommy-person. If I say on com, we got to move, we got to move. Tell Austin—if I was against him—I’d have switched keys on him. You know I could’ve, if he doesn’t. I can open any door on this ship, pick any pocket right now. He’s got that key I’m talking about. I’ll give him the code that answers that son of a bitch out there, the way I said. If everything goes wrong—he’s got to use it. Tell him so. Understand?”

“Chance this Patrick does know… where we’re going?”

“We see in the dark, lover. But not that well. Even figuring that old hulk’s on the Pell reach and the Tripoint perimeter… that’s a lot of space to search, for a quiet object. No. Odds are absolutely on him not knowing, especially the way he’s riding us. He doesn’t want to lose track of us. And if he’s any appreciable distance past us, hard-ordnance is impossible for him. Not impossible for us. We’ll fire right down his tail. That’s what I’ll try to do, position us where we got that chance. But Austin’s going to come out with everything screwed. Cargo screwed. Extra ship in the soup. Man’s going to be real damn mad at me.”

“Not your fault.”

“Yeah. But, you got to understand, I’m on real short credit with him.”

“Don’t understand.”

“Since Chrissy’s stunt at Pell? Both of us are on Austin’s shit-list. I want you to know this one more detail: this little card Austin’s got? Austin’s got to offload that mass, that’s one, because we’re loaded, and Patrick isn’t; and he’s got to feed the old wreck that keycard real fast, close as I’m dropping us. Austin doesn’t know that. It’s not a detail he’s ever needed to know. Keeps the suppliers honest, you understand. Now he has to know. That key-card gets the hold to open, in the lock slot. But in the cargo console slot, with the right code, that old wreck can write to that key-card—and he’s got to get me that authorization, he’s got to use that codeword before we get out of here. But if happens he doesn’t believe me—Tommy, if he won’t input or if he takes me off that nav board, we are screwed. I’ve got to be on the bridge. Beatrice has got to take the next figures I give her. If the captain orders me off the bridge, I tell you, I’m locking-down the navigation computers.”

“You can’t do that!”

“Oh, I can do it, Tommy, I can do it, and Bianco can probably crack my lock, given an hour or so. But Patrick’ll blow us to hell first. Austin will figure that part with no prompt at all.”

“God, you’re crazy.”

“I’ve been accused of that. But you watch me not talk, Tommy-sweet. Austin can ask me, pretty please. Austin can do what I say. “ A hand brushed his forehead. “I just want somebody but me to know, if it happens. But, listen, if Austin’s the man I think he is, he’ll deliver that damn cargo. That card’s his proof. His credit with the Fleet. Call it old-fashioned honor. I think they still use that word. He’ll fight to keep it.”

“How?” Consciousness came up for a moment. He saw her shadow against the running colors, solid mass, when nothing else was. Voices rang and echoed. Time might have passed. “I don’t understand how you can do this. How. Drop us. Anywhere.”

“Not much else you can control in this space, lover, just the power you can throw into the interface. Or dump off. Yeah, there’s things I can do. Patrick-bastard’s trying to hang back on me, not using the power he’s got. It’s an old trick, ride our wave and try to drop in behind us. He’d like to haul me down, but it’s dangerous as hell, and say he can’t do it without a gravity slope, so we’re safe for the while. Besides, he knows I got to dump down anyway—and I know where and he doesn’t. So when we hit the Tripoint slope, he’ll expect I’ll bobble the field and feint a drop. Wrong. I’ll drop us for real, right out from under him. So if he doesn’t read my mind, he’s potentiating elsewhere. Same event-packet. Puts us time-wise near simultaneous, position-wise as far separate as I can fake him, the gods of physics know where: the variables are hell, and one of ‘em’s Patrick. Wish I knew if that ghosty freighter’s an echo. If it’s real, she’ll come down, too. Just don’t know where.”

He was following it. Didn’t want to, but he was—at least the part that said they were riding close with ships on entry.

Military stuff.

They didn’t have to be boarded. Their own navigator was the breed an honest merchanter was most afraid of.

“Tommy-love, last warning, if Austin balks—h-a-v-o-c is the code he has to input to get us that authorization I need. Key-card in the cargo console slot while you input. Two should know that, down there. Tell him, if he asks, that Capella’s not betrayed him. “ Mouth covered his. Hand went down his side. Gentle touch. “You’re such an honest lad, Tommy-person. And there are so few. Go below when they ask for help. Saby’ll take you. They’ll need every hand they’ve got down in cargo and they damn sure won’t want you up where the computers are. Remember what I’ve said.”

“Huh?”

“Saby can get you down to cargo. I want you there. You just insist. G’night, lover. See you. See you otherside. “ Lips touched his again, passionately, deeply, gently. “Sweet, sweet dreams, Tommy.”

Trank was worn thin. Didn’t know long he’d waked, over all. Not long. Not often. Now he couldn’t get his equilibrium. Couldn’t rest, either, after the shadow was gone.

He lay there with sounds running through his brain, in the shifting chaos. Shutting the eyes didn’t stop it. Colors kept going off, flashes, like pressure against the eyes. Thoughts kept going, turning back on each other, and he wanted to believe. Wanted to believe his night-walker was telling, however selectively, the truth.

Didn’t know if it was scrambled logic, or if what you heard when the brain was flashing colors and rumbling with thunder that wasn’t sound… had to stick in your head, and you couldn’t discriminate what was lies.

Distances go down a tunnel, don’t they?

Remember what I’ve said…

—iii—

SHIP DROPPED. LONG, long sequence. Body ached.

The whole of space seemed to bend.

Supposed to be a hard one, it was all right, it was supposed to be this way.

Then… he began to think it wasn’t going right, that the ship was in trouble.

Something boomed through the hull. Vibration began—that experience didn’t explain. He grabbed at Saby’s hand, felt Saby’s fingers bend around his.

He tried to keep his breaths deep and even. Dreams ran and melted color across his vision. Memories of sound. Memories of a lingering, deeply erotic kiss, a touch running over his skin.

Boom. Thump. His pulse pounded

A moment of profound hush, the air gone numb.

Hydraulics worked, somewhere in the frame. Wasn’t cargo. Couldn’t figure…

Third loud boom. He’d never heard a ship sound like that on entry.

“We are here. “ A calm voice on com. Beatrice’s, he thought, comforted by that icy competence. “Stay belted. We are in docking approach. Essential movement only. “

It didn’t seem real. “Can’t,” he muttered, thinking he must have passed out a while, lost some hours of time. “Docking? We can’t be, this soon.”

“We hit real close to the target,” Saby murmured. “Pella’s good. She always does this one. “ Her hand moved. He turned his head, making the whole universe seem to tilt. Saby had found the nutri-packs, he thought. He heard the rustling, reached to help her.

Pilot couldn’t be better off. Trying to dock. The shakes crawling up a body’s gut respected no occupation and no emergency, while Capella…

Dropping a ship straight into docking approach—couldn’t do that, damn crazy woman… at Tripoint, no less, triple, unstable mass…

Computer lockdown.

Bloody hell…

Fingers were numb, on the seal of the packet Saby gave him.

Boom. Again.

Hands shook. “What is that?” he asked.

“That’s us firing. “ Saby’s voice was faint. Scared-sounding. “We fired once as we came out. Inertial-mass ordnance goes a major fraction of light, then. Whoever we’re shooting at… for him to fire upslope, ‘s too far for his missiles, even internal propulsions. He’s got to hope we run into it. Seen this before, thanks. Don’t like it.”

Patrick, Capella had said—when had she said?—This Patrick, navigator. Like her. Another one that saw in the dark. Saw them—the way he’d seen—

Once you, you know, become aware…

Colors running. Sound coming at them… weaving back and forth, through bone and brain…

Another volley.

Couldn’t get the damn ‘pack tube free. Hands trembled. Saby was beside him, trying to get herself collected. They were lying in a nest of spent nutri-packs.

Gets cold. Gets lonely. Tommy-love.

—iv—

NOTE ON THE PRESSURE-SLATE: propped up and braced against Austin’s number one monitor, in an all-too-familiar hand: I got us here. Spook rode us all the way, entrained a third ship of some kind, likely a light-armed freighter. Check screen. Sorry—Viking try was screwed, mass far exceeding brake with spook and freighter in packet.

FYI: hulk is heavy armed and will fire if we don’t provide keycard in airlock slot as usual within one hour from our crossing her perimeter, with firing in system. Always true. Now you need to know. If, arriving in her perimeter, we move any direction but toward her—she is not our friend. Maneuver or delay of approach not advisable. Patrick wants the key-card. May try to cripple, not kill. Respectfully, sir, suggest you not bet the ship on it. PS. You want Patrick’s ass, you put card in the wreck’s cargo console slot, input code HAVOC. Absolute necessity you do this or we don’t leave. Meanwhile will lay course for next point. Must offload all cargo mass to reach. Safe port—distance 7 lights. Capella.

“Bloody hell!”

He shot a look toward Capella’s station. Capella’s back was turned. The second chief navigator was busy. Austin took a swallow, forced it down, stared at the nav screen that came up on his second monitor, first-formed data.

There wasn’t any port out of Tripoint that lay at seven lights. Not Pell. Not Viking. Loaded, they couldn’t do it. Unloaded, even, it was a stretch for Corinthian.

And where, for God’s sake? What dark spot in the universe was the woman calc’ing jump for?

Meanwhile the ship was trimming up, under Beatrice’s hands, with increasing jolts of the attitude jets.

Hard jolt. Stomach heaved. He grabbed another nutri-pack from the clip, ripped the tube out, sucked down a mouthful of copper-tasting fluid as navigation data arrived suddenly on his screen, first re-make since the drop.

Never got used to notes turning up out of the dark.

Didn’t like unscheduled problems arriving out of it, either.

Three ships. Corinthian, near the Object, all right, and inbound. At distance, about 2 seconds light beyond them on their vector, Silver Dream, and at 1 second’s remove—

Sprite.

Shit. —Shit!

“Michaels!”

“Sir.”

“That’s Sprite. “

“Just saw that. Dropped in front of us. Fifteen hour climb for their missiles. We’re still all right. “

A safe port, seven lights fucking distant? Off into the dark, to some Fleet refuge their navigator kept secret until now? A place no Union or Alliance optics had ever just happened to find, when optics had made a thorough scan of the edges of space?

“Nav. Why not Viking next?”

“Wouldn’t risk it, sir, if that freighter survives. “

“Nerves, nav. Plot Viking, as an in-case.”

“Yes, sir. But if that freighter gets out of here, they’ll report. They got a good position to see where we’re working. Our cargo-site… is blown, less they and Patrick both go to hell. And, sir, the Fleet said when they sent me… there’s a place you could go. I need that little card validated, captain-sir, and I can take you there, safe and sure. But I got to have the card. So does Patrick. “

Give the bastard the card, was the thought in his mind. Second chief’s refuge at seven lights could just as well be a trap. Crew taken. Ship confiscated for military refit. Rumor held it still happened.

And Capella wanted to take them off into the dark, getting them clear of this faction of the Fleet, while the other faction, Capella’s faction, was going to reward them with some damn secret port for protecting a key-card to a hulk that, if they got out of this, a freighter now knew for what it was?

Dammittobloodyhell…

Not a chance, not a damn chance he’d heard all the truth from the second chief yet.

And the Hawkins ship?

Firing was still going on, periodic boom as ordnance left Corinthian.

Corinthian had fired at Silver Dream initially from a high-energy point. Inertial-mass cannon-balls or self-propelled nukes were equally deadly at that v. And they’d sent—were still sending, at intervals—swarms of inerts after that ship. Hindmost had the advantage in that regard.

Their inerts might equally well hit Sprite. The freighter had shed all relative v, and they were close enough to be in danger—he hadn’t seen the fire-path calc’ed, but both Sprite and Silver Dream had dropped late, beyond them.

Silver Dream had likewise dumped hard, then spent time on an instant evasive maneuver, expecting those inerts to be traveling up their backside, no question: the ship was a survivor, to be this old in the game. Two seconds off from their informational wavefront. Patrick knew where they were, no question.

But even powered missiles weren’t an option for Patrick to use, not from a retreating vector at two light-seconds remove—a single light-second or so past its target was worse luck for a starship than a light-hour: Silver Dream’s stardrive couldn’t jump short enough to close the gap, Patrick’s launch platform was negative v relative to his target, and Patrick’s only choice now was a hard realspace run up to meaningful speed, with Corinthian ordnance coming right down his path.

He had to reposition for his run in.

Meanwhile a noisy damn Hawkins freighter was flooding its stupid Sprite-Sprite-Sprite ID out into the EM ambient because Sprite didn’t have a damn cut-off.

And Sprite, carrying a Pell-origin drift?

God, it was surreal. What wasn’t Sprite hauling, that it could have reached Pell and all but over-jumped them coming back toward Viking again, until their collective mass snagged it into system-drop with them? Low-mass cargo for sure.

Marie Hawkins’ hate? Marie Hawkins’ obsession?

He blinked, swallowed another metallic mouthful of liquid and a shudder raced through his gut, maybe the nutrient, maybe the realization of a ship full of fools and a handful of genuine innocents sitting out there noisier than very hell, at a single degree of separation from their position relative to the spook, the spook maneuvering to bear down on them and consequently on Sprite as fast as Patrick could get here, God help the woman, and God help her whole ship.

Sprite was a registered ID, on the ship-lists. The spook could check her out in the flick of a key. Silver Dream could, maybe, if Marie was lucky, decide that Sprite was a legitimate freighter, just happening in, by some cosmic luck, and ignore it, like a good, quiet spook.

Or the spook could figure it was Corinthian faking ID, or that it was something else faking ID, and factor them into its targeting decisions.

Ordnance from Corinthian should go right past Sprite, out into the dark. The numbers showing now were a miss by an absolute hair. Inerts or not, Sprite sensors should pick some thing up when that volley went past their bows. And Silver Dream might not be sure which ship it came from.

Figure it, Mischa Hawkins. Figure we’re not firing at you. Read the ambient. Look out at the dark, you damn fool, just once in your life, look out there and ask yourself the right question.

There’s fire coming the other way. Move the damn ship.

Burst from the trim jets. He snatched after another nutri-pack.

Get the ship into mate with their supply dump, yeah. They’d always dropped close. Capella was good.

Always made it well inside an hour. Put the card in, that was one thing. Always put the card in. It credited them, when they used it again, at Viking—along with the cargo always waiting for them here.

Capella had never mentioned that the old hulk had a kill-function.

Not your friend, hell.

But enter a code called HAVOC in that hulk, on their Fleet navigator’s say-so, a code of that nature, into what she now admitted was armed, and she didn’t tell you specifically what it did or where its hostile action stopped?

Not unless they had no… bloody… choice.

—v—

THE EMERGENCY SIREN WAS WAILING through the ship, Duran was on com, ordering Sprite’s kids’ loft to take immediate emergency procedures, Paxton had been on a second ago saying they’d jumped short, nobody knew what the hell had happened, or why they’d dropped short of their intention, except a rough drop and then something going past them, so high-mass, meaning fast, that they couldn’t figure what it was. “Satisfied?” Mischa spared breath to ask her. “Satisfied?”

“Change coordinates. “ Marie pounded the counter above

Mischa’s console softly with a clenched fist, tried to slow her breaths. A post-jump headache and an adrenaline overload didn’t help. “Get us down, dammit. Get us up, get us out of the plane of fire.”

“Somebody’s back there,” Paxton was saying, and Sully, helm, was yelling at Mischa, off-com,

“It was missiles, it’s a heave-to order! It could be Military, one of them is bound to be the Military, chasing Corinthian—we can’t go shooting at shadows, dammit!”

“Track point of origin,” Marie said.

“We can’t go firing—”

“Sully, just shut up!” Mischa, off-corn himself. “I heard you! Get a point of origin!” Mischa was sweating. “Shut that damn siren off! God!”

“Hindmost is Corinthian, “ Marie said.

“Corinthian, Corinthian, I’m sick to death of Corinthian, I’m sick to death of Bowe, I’m sick to death of you and that damn kid! I don’t want to hear about him, I don’t want to hear any more of your damn ideas, Marie, just sit down and keep your mouth shut! You don’t know anything about missiles, you don’t know what you’ve stirred up, you got us into this mess, now, just get the hell back to your finagling damn deals and leave ops to people who know what they’re doing.”

“Mischa,—get us out of—”

Proximity klaxon went off. Marie looked up, stared at the screens, some of which flared red, winced, but it was less than the blink of an eye.

Whatever it was, second volley, had passed them into the dark.

“Where is he? Damn him, where is he?”

“They’re not targeting us,” Marie said. “We’re still alive.”

“They’re firing at the Military,” Sully said.

“Sully, for God’s sake,—Marie,—shut up!”

“Mischa. “ Marie rapped the console, got a calm word in. “Take us out of plane. Now. Settle who and where later.”

“Sit down! We’re going on to Viking, we’ll meet Bowe there, if that’s what it takes. We’ll do it where there’s police.”

“Viking’s in the direction it’s firing at, you damn fool!”

“I said sit down! We don’t know where the hell we are. We’ve come down way out on the fringes, we have a navigational problem we have to solve before we complicate it with any—”

She brought her fist down on the console. “Shut up, Mischa, dammit! Saja,—Sully, plus 2 out of plane at 5 g’s, count of five, now!”

“Set,” helm said.

“Abort that, Sully, kill it!”

“Somebody better do something,” Sully said.

Marie flung herself onto a safety bench and grabbed the belts. Shoved the catches closed.

“I’m calling a captaincy vote. Now. Saja. Sully. Do it!”

Ship moved. Hard.

—vi—

“SCARED THEM,” MIKE REMARKED. Austin murmured a preoccupied yeah, and registered Sprite’s in-progress coordinate change as one problem down. Or up. At least not in line of fire. Sprite moved, sending its noisy ID out into the dark. Corinthian moved in EM silence, except the minor engines, passive scan only.

Figure Silver Dream was in motion, too, not in hard-scan range, but gathering realspace speed, off which her own missiles and inerts could be effective.

A Fleet renegade. Hope this Patrick didn’t have an approach code that could let him dive inside the hulk’s self-defined perimeter. Every klick he had to maneuver, every precaution he had to take to avoid it was an accuracy problem. And if he didn’t know the hulk was armed—he knew Corinthian was; and had to assume that Sprite was.

And, mistake—but they weren’t going to explain it—Patrick had to assume that Sprite was on Corinthian’s side, and had just maneuvered to fire up Silver Dream’s approach path.

Number two monitor had just gone live. A blinking blue circle framed a patch of what could look exactly like every other patch of starry space.

The Object was out there. That was what Bianco meant by switching him that black image, with the dot flashing in the center. Couldn’t see it yet. Graininess of the image was equal to the dusting of stars equally dim.

Meanwhile… meanwhile… ask what Sprite thought it was going to do, with its little rail-gun, at one light-second.

Fire at them or fire at Silver Dream, who wouldn’t believe protestations of non-combatancy.

Question who was in control on that ship, or what it was bidding for. And if Capella was right…

“Nav.”

“Sir.”

“Does the Object take being fired toward?”

“No, sir, it’s real pissed if that happens. Recommend not. “

Could guess that, all right. Hope the fool on Sprite didn’t try it.

And maybe Patrick knew that, too, or suspected it, and planned not to fire but once. One heavy hit. Blow the hulk and them, together, the Mazianni’s problem solved—if second chief was wrong and Patrick didn’t have her head or that card on that high a priority.

A shadow appeared on the screen that targeted the hulk, now, frighteningly fast growth of a darkness against the dust.

Freighter. Years dead. Gutted. As good a warehouse as you could ask for, a cargo-handling rig as fast as a completely zero-g rack could afford, just hit the release when they came off the line and hope a rebound didn’t come back at you… hellish enough, trying to rush the cans out.

Damn lunatic Sprite trying to shoot two-credit missiles at you the while…

But the hands were good, and that cargo offload could be blinding fast, if you weren’t worrying about fragiles—and most of what they were hauling wasn’t, give or take the Scotch.

A few real high-mass cans. Steel rods. They were to worry about, when they were in motion. Inertial within the capacity of that rack, their mass exceeded can limits. Bitchy load even on a station dock, at their slow speeds. And a zero-g line tended to develop oscillations—hell dealing with that mass.

Hope Patrick made acquaintance of the inerts, head on, before he gathered v enough for shielding effect. It took far longer to dock and offload than it did to run those cans out into space… but inside the hulk’s perimeter, with that card in, they had, according to the second chief, something she vitally needed… provided Patrick didn’t also have codes to let him approach.

Damn lot of variables.

And Patrick’s estimated position was shifting constantly now in the numbers on his screen. Patrick had begun his run—in longscan’s primary estimation. That estimated v was coming up fast.

Couldn’t fire dead ahead while you were putting on v like that—you’d run into your own ordnance. Patrick had to get off a passing or retreating shot. The EM bath that Sprite’s ID was sending out was no help at all. It echoed off solids, just like radar. Thank you, thank you, Marie Hawkins.

“This HAVOC code, nav, just what’s it do?”

“Sir, I think it’ll respect the user. Nothing else. Damn sure nothing shooting at it. “

“Hulk won’t do that anyway, will it?”

“Sir, I’m not need-to-know on that level. “

Shit.

And the Hawkinses out there, ship full of fools.

Shit on them.

Beatrice wasn’t talking. Not since drop. Probably was aware, but when Beatrice was working this particular bitch of an approach, she was in her own universe. The Object had no motion to speak of, but their two masses made one bitch of an impact possible, if they didn’t soft-touch, and the Object didn’t talk to you. Silent as any spook, always. Cold. Very.

Beatrice professed not to like it.

Like she didn’t like sex.

Sudden slam from the engines. The screen suddenly showed an on-rushing dark spot. The blot on the stars rushed at the camera. Filled the screen, total dark.

Jolt. Stop.

The body had—gut-level, intellectual, rational functions to the contrary, and no matter how many times they’d done it—braced for impact.

“We have the Object between us and Sprite, “ Beatrice announced calmly, then, smoothly as on station approach. “Touch in ten minutes. Do we believe nav, or what?”

“Thank you, helm. Yes, we believe nav, because we have no fucking choice.”

He punched general com. “This is the captain. We have a very short window to offload. Enemy is in system, proceeding toward us from dead v at two seconds light. We will, however, offload to shed mass, and we are going to offload at all possible speed. We cannot afford mistakes. We have a narrow margin. Touch and dock in less than ten minutes. When the siren sounds, all hands, repeat, all hands, on-shift and off-, not at this moment at ops-critical stations, suit for vacuum and start cargo offload. We’re going to tie down the brake levers, on both sides. We don’t care if we dent the walls. I want volunteers for the release-station in the receiving hold. Hazard pay and hazard privilege both apply, and we hope the receiving equipment takes it.”

—vii—

“I’M GOING,” TOM SAID, still flat in bed, while trim-up went on. “Got to be at least an e-suit or something I can borrow. Saby, I swear to you. I grew up in the cargo office, I know the boards, I know the equipment. I’ve worked the line. I swear, I swear I won’t screw it, I don’t want to sit up here waiting to be blown.”

He expected argument. But Saby didn’t argue.

“Michaels has to be on the bridge. He’s our gunner, he won’t suit. Use his rig. I’m running Hold Technical. Just keep the cans off my neck.”

Michaels. He remembered a man beaten.

Remembered why, then. Knew the rules, Tink said. Follow the rules. Ship was at stake. All their lives. Ship had its own logic. Forget everything else.

Remembered Michaels… saying, Kid’s shaky… light duty…

Contact. Easy bump. Grapples activated, banged into lock.

Saby’s belts clicked on that sound. So did his, and he cleared her path as she scrambled across—tried to help her up and threw a supporting hand against the wall, his own equilibrium not so reliable as he’d thought.

Saby didn’t wait for amenities, opened the door and headed out, zipping what she’d loosed for comfort.

Crew and dockers in dress and undress thumped into the corridors at a wobbly, staggering run, generally in their direction, down lower main, knocking into walls, some of them, but going as fast as they could.

It was an eerie feeling, everybody running the same direction, like suit drill, but not drill, nothing now was drill. It was the emergency a spacer lived all his life trying never, ever to have.

The gang-up at the end of the corridor split in two directions, down the transverses, the mirror-image D blocks, where the suit lockers were—locker doors already powered open, from the bridge, suits open, helmets and harnesses suspended on their racks, a surreal gathering of human shells, crew already backing into them, sealing them in that drill a spacer could do drunk or asleep.

“Michaels!” Saby said, and shoved him at Michael’s locker.

He turned, stepped into the suit backward, got his arms into the sleeves, sealed the front, kicked the release plate to bring the LS backpack and helmet down over his head and shoulders.

Seals clicked. Indicators and faceplate display flared on, confirming lifesupport and seals positive.

Came, instantly, that claustrophobic shortness of breath the suit gave him. It always got to him this way: he’d helped Marie in cargo, yeah, mostly from the ops boards safely upside—he never suited except in drills.

The borrowed rig smelled of disinfectant, of Michaels’ use. The air he depended on came to him rationed by a regulator. The mass of the harness as it came free of the rack was an instant revision of body-space and center of gravity.

Another suited figure leaned into vision, adjusted something on his chest-link. SABRINA PERRAULT, the paint on the helmet said. With a decal rose. She bumped helmets.

“You all right? Com not working?”

“Yeah. It’s working.”

Stupid. He’d not turned his communications on. He’d sworn to her he knew what he was doing, and she knew…

“Channel D for private. “ She punched something on his shoulder. The channel indicator moved, near his chin. “Come on, expert.”

She moved and he followed, at the shuffling, big-footed walk which ring rotation imposed on them, a lock-step sweating haste, back along the D-curve, toward the cargo lift as it opened.

They got in at the rear, jammed in as closely and as tightly as they could, fourteen, maybe fifteen suited bulks, before the doors shut and the lift jolted out of synch with the passenger ring.

Immediately after, one fractional pass of the ring about the core, the car banged into lock with the zero-g frame.

Automatic doors let them out on a dark hold. The cold of space froze their attending puff of humidified air into ice crystals in the spotty glare of the helmet lights. Hold lights flared on around them, illuminating loading machinery, racks, and tiers of cans that jammed their hold right up to the red line. A group of white-suited figures was going forward, down the still-empty cargo chute—he saw officers’ sleeve patches on that lot. All around him, bodies moved, white, bulky, anonymous except for sleeve patches, non-com crew fanning out in silence along hand-railings, taking station out among the tiers of cans, ready to sort those racks out onto the main delivery track and secure the spent carriages when they came down the return track.

Saby grabbed his arm briefly, hit his chest with her hand and got his suit light on, illumination for the shadowed areas.

He wasn’t tracking a hundred percent. The suit read-out wasn’t in the familiar order in the chin-level display—he hadn’t realized his light wasn’t defaulted on; and crew knocked into them in their delay, making a gap in the line, hindering an already dangerous effort. A jump-queasy stomach and the beginnings of a headache argued he could easily become a worse problem, and he was determined not to be.

An enemy in the system?

Colors flashed, in memory. Sound wailed at them.

Got to have that card in the slot and that message input, Tommy. If Patrick comes at us, and he will, got to have that message input. Then that old hulk’s our friend.

Sweat ran, a trickle down his face he couldn’t wipe. He moved where Saby and the rest moved. Words echoed out of the dark in his skull, red and blue flashes smeared and ran while he hauled himself along on the hand-rail.

God, release the line brakes… The 4-meter cannisters, with the mass they carried… could probably survive the offload without bursting, if they were good, double-walled cans, no temperature-constant stuff—but Austin had called for hazard pay volunteers on the release end, and he’d seen first-hand what happened when a can broke under stress. He’d seen it happen to a ship on a station dock, brake lever accidentally jammed open. Can flew off, hit the deck, hit a support girder, killed one dockworker, sent fourteen to hospital—

“Look out!” came over his helmet-com. Somebody bumped him, passing down the line in a hell of a hurry. Didn’t know who it was. He moved, out of breath, hand over hand down the rail that led along the can-track, trying to hit the rhythm Saby did, ahead of him—he was trying not to hold up the line behind them, because there was nobody in front, and he couldn’t get his breath… colors washed across his vision. Remembrance of smell-taste-hearing, bone-deep sound, all but pain…

They were well past the hold lights, now. The can-track was a continuous-loop railing in the dim overhead, the exit-chute wall was narrowing around them, and light came as a scatter of patches where their suit lights picked out solid objects, a back-pack, a hand, a section of safety rail as they hand-over-handed into the absolute night of the chute.

Then the cargo check console materialized in Saby’s chest-light, nobody manning it. Saby left the line, moved in with authority, threw the console switch that started the red motion warning strobing in the overhead… he hesitated, sailed off the hand-rail to clear others’ way, and grabbed the console edge.

“Run ‘em out. “ That was Austin’s voice over the com, on the general channel. “Get them moving, we’re waiting up here.”

Up here. Austin was forward, then, in the mate-up zone… that wasn’t where the captain belonged, damn him…

“We got precious little time, “ Austin was saying. “Skit’s coming our way, but the sumbitch can’t fire til he passes. “

“Cans are going to be all over that hold, “ somebody said. “Damn free-fall billiards. “

“Yeah, yeah, best we can do, Deke, sorry, neat isn’t in our capacity right now, we’ll be real satisfied with out of here. “

“We got high-mass stuff in this load!”

“Deke, just watch the damn line—she’s rolling!”

Cans had started to move. Tom caught a look at Saby, lights from the console a multicolored constellation on Saby’s mask

… busy and on a hair-trigger. Saby flipped other switches, engaging can-pickup robotics that moved the cans on their tracks way back in the tiers… he understood the board—he knew what process had just started; the carriages were picking up cans back there, sliding into the motorized track. The inspection brake at this console only slowed a can enough for the laser-reader to find the can customs-tags, and a deft hand to snatch off any remaining monitor plug… but then the tractor-chain caught the carriage and ran the can up to whatever rate of delivery the end-line brake was supposed to control.

If it wasn’t latched down. Which left Saby’s brake as the only regulator on a line not even designed for free-fall—God knew what motion the cans were going to pick up as they hit the chain…

Stupid, stupid, stupid place to off-load, he said to himself, having the whole picture now, why crew had lined up along the exit track… human muscle, to keep those cans under control.

And no instructions… they’d done it before.

“You all right here?” he asked her. “You need help?”

“My job, “ Saby said. “I got it. You know the board?”

“Half-assed. I’m going on the line.”

“You can stand back-up. Stay out of the track!”

Danger, then. Danger of a glitch in the line—crew forward couldn’t do anything but help those cans across whatever inevitable bump in the track the mate-up with the other hold might make—never done a handoff to another ship, but it couldn’t be a perfect mate—always a glitch-point, even with dockside. He moved, followed the hand-rail, knew he was heading for a potential accident-point, if somebody was going to lose a hand, once the walls narrowed—worst of all when the cans were in the mate-up, where carriages this side released and carriages the other side had damned well better be ready and adequate—

Can passed him, another, caught by the moving chain, then—he saw both sway as they whisked past him on the last tractor-section, into the cargo-chute’s section, into the dark—didn’t want any swinging, a swing started here could impact the side-rails, slow the cans, make a jam-up on the line.

He found a place to hang, wall at his back, safety rail between him and the track—a crewman was working there, and he joined in, met can after can with his gloved hands, until he hit a rhythm in the moves, move of his foot, move of his body—breath came too short at first, raw fear. Then he acquired a feel for the fractional degree and vector the cans tended to sway, and it became saner—the panic almost left him. He had wind enough; he heard somebody else breathing into an open mike… he thought it was Saby. He could hear the terse slow-up and speed-up orders to Saby’s station from some officer forward in the chute, and fell into the rhythm until he all but forgot there was anything else in the universe but those cans coming faster and faster. Then something happened up ahead that shouldn’t happen, the whole track shook for no reason. He couldn’t hear it, but he saw the shudder in the cans—”Damn!” he heard over the com, and somebody else said: “Track’s warping, she’s shot a rivet, ease back, ease back. “

Oh, damn, he thought, we’re not going to make it; and Saby said:

“I got it slowed, I got it… Tom, get down there, get a look, tell me how bad. “

He didn’t ask—Saby didn’t have eyes for what was happening ahead in the chute, the rig was stressed past design limits, and somebody on com was yelling at Saby to keep it rolling, dammit, keep it rolling, and giving orders to shunt tier five-c off to last-loaded, they’d run that set of cans out if the rig held and they had time…

Something in that load, he said to himself, something high-mass they weren’t sure the equipment could take. He hauled himself along the hand-rail, along the outbound chute, as far as a section where the cans had picked up a hell of a bobble.

Cans were still coming past him. Guys were working ahead, damping down the motion with their hands and bodies, the same as they’d done higher up the line—you didn’t know what kind of mass was coming at you in a given can, whether you were going to meet foam rubber or foam steel in a load. It was terrifying, but the receiving zone was yelling hurry up, speed up.

“Saby!” he said. “They got a hand-span swing at the rate you’re sending ‘em now, you copy?”

“I copy. Get back here. “

“I’m all right, do you copy?”

“We got no damn time!” somebody else broke in. “Get on it, dammit, move it, move it up plus two, Saby, she’ll take it—”

That was an officer talking, by the sound of it, and he didn’t belong on com. He found a space next to a big guy as the cans’ delivery rate began to speed up—the several of them acting as living buffers to keep the cans moving steadily.

“It’ll be all right, “ came over his com, over somebody’s hard breathing.

Didn’t even know who the guy was until he’d worked up a total sweat and a can swung back, knocking him into the wall. The big guy sent the can on its way with a shove, and a one-handed reach met his grip as he rebounded off the wall—hauled him out of danger of the track, to a hand-hold he could reach.

Tink looked startled.

“‘S all right,” Tom breathed, “I’m all right, Tink, thanks.”

Wasn’t time to talk. Cans were passing them, fast as nightmare, now. Oscillation at the warp-point had proliferated, and all he could do was keep one hand to the safety-hold, a straight-arm block to damp the motion in his area ever so little, next man to take a little more swing off, and on to the next, like assembly-line robots.

Couldn’t let it stress the clamps. The track had already bowed under a mass-heavy can at too much v, no telling when another might come down the line—hope the crew in the hold were reading labels.

Oscillation grew worse. A can hit the wall, acquired a real nasty motion, slowed.

“Hold it!” somebody yelled. “Got a hang-up, hold, hold, hold!”

Cans bumped, all the way down the line. Tom hauled himself back, panting, shoulder to shoulder with Tink.

Then Austin’s voice came on, and channel A’s indicator flashed, general override. “We’re dear, we haven’t got damn forever, Saby, let’s get a move on. “

The cans started to move again. Tom held his breath—one can had to nudge another into motion, all the way back from Saby’s station, where she could let loose cans to the inertial line, that was all.

Bump, bump, bump, cans came out of the dark, nudging each other with a swing they had to damp, and the line moved, faster, faster, faster. He thought—nightmare flash—about that hostile ship out there… time lost, maybe fatal time.

He’d gotten the shakes into his knees, scared—exhausted, he wasn’t sure.

Patrick, Capella’d said.

Patrick. Noise in the dark.

Runny blues and reds, sound that went through the bones… he couldn’t remember. Except Capella saying, A freighter screaming…

He shoved at cans as they came, one after the other, the rack assembly moving uninterrupted, now, cans one behind the other, a moving wall of shadowed white.

Somebody screamed, on A, screamed, where official voices went back and forth. He heard Christian, then, somewhere, he had no idea where.

“Just stay clear, stay back, it’s all right. Patch it, patch! dammit, he’s losing air—”

“Got it, got it. It’s just his finger. “

“What’s our time?” somebody else asked, and Christian answered, “Just do it, dammit. Keep your damn hands clear, we’re one row to go. “

Almost through. They could make it. Suddenly he couldn’t get enough air, touched the air-flow regulator—but cans came in, bumped a slower can, set it in motion. Careful, careful, he wished Saby, don’t lose it, don’t lose it—he ignored his shortened breath, shoved as cans passed, to the limit of his strength and his grip on the hand-hold bar.

Bumping in the line had started another oscillation, cans endangering workers along the walls—he flattened, had enough room until the effect dissipated down the line. Cans bumped one another, threatened another jam, and then didn’t—Saby was controlling the feed back there, finessing it, best she could…

“Captain. Sprite’s moving this way. “

Sprite’s…

Moving.

“Oh… shit!” Tink said.

He didn’t know he’d moved, but he had, he didn’t realize Tink had made a grab for him, but he’d slung Tink’s hand off—didn’t know where he was going, but he shoved with his foot on a can and shot forward, the walls a blur in his vision as he richocheted off cans, off the wall, grabbed for a handhold where the railing climbed to the release zone. Brain caught up to body, then—he wanted escape, wanted forward, where ship’s officers were, where Austin was, where the truth was, as much as they hadn’t told to him, who that ship was, that was coming at them.

Bright lights now, vacant stretch of hand-rail, at the top of the cans now, the cargo-lock mate-up area, cans bumping in the guide rails, where the line started a process to shunt the cans on Corinthians rails off into the mated rail in the other hold—both cargo locks standing wide open, all the way into the hulk they were dealing with.

Com D light was blinking. Saby wanted him. Maybe Tink did. Breath was ragged. The suit regulator wouldn’t give him more oxygen.

Betrayal, then, Tink’s voice, on Universal: “All hands, Hawkins is in Michaels’ rig.—Tom, you got to get back here. “

Save the ship. He knew that. He understood. Tink had to get him.

“Tom!” Saby’s voice. Saby couldn’t leave her post. Wouldn’t. Too many lives… “Tom, come back, Tom, I need you! I need you, dammit!”

“Tom! “Tink’s voice, again, anguished. “—Captain, he’s coming your way! I can’t catch him…”

The whole ship wanted to stop him. In front of him, glaring light, Corinthian’s cargo-lock console, as he hand-over-handed toward the officers there.

“Hawkins!”

Christian.

He had no direction with the com. He scanned the 360° of helmet display, looking, but had no warning as someone snagged the back-pack, spun him around to rebound against the wall. “Son-of-a-bitch! What are you doing?”

He fended off the hold, but it wasn’t only Christian, it was two, three of them, grabbing hold, starting an inertial tumble. They bumped cans, richocheted off to the wall of the chute, back again. A section of tractor-chain ground against his helmet, bump, bump, bump, until somebody hauled them out of it and anchored their collective mass along the rail.

“Cut his regulator!” somebody shouted, C. BOWE was the name on the helmet closest, the one with his hand on his oxygen supply.

He panicked, swung to free himself, claustrophobic as if the oxygen had already stopped.

“You lied to me,” he panted, and struggled to get a hold on the rail. “You all fucking lied to me, you son of a bitch—what ship, what’s going on out there?”

Someone else was yelling—he couldn’t hear it; then “Hold it!”

Austin’s voice. “Hold it, dammit, that’s high mass—brake on, damn you, cut it—”

Something happened. “Shit!” somebody yelled, but he was still fighting for air, found an arm free and got a hold on the rail, as a jackstraw debris of metal rods flew everywhere.

“Brake! Brake! Can’s ruptured—”

Crewmen were yelling, rods were flying everywhere, into the line, into the moving cans, rebounding. A piece slammed him side-on, knocked him against the wall with no surety his arm wasn’t broken, but he got his glove to his regulator, tried to get the air-flow up.

“Patch!” somebody screamed—suit rupture—and nobody was watching him, they were shutting the cargo doors, far as they could with the racks mated, trying to stop the debris.

He couldn’t breathe. He drifted, trying, with clumsy fingers, to adjust the external regulator. Last impact had thrown him against the cargo-lock console, piece of metal rammed right through the shelter wall and into the console board, more of the jackstraws in slower, entropic motion now, companions in his drift. He fended them, tried to calm his breathing.

“Austin!” he heard Christian calling. “Austin, use your com, dammit!”

“Captain was otherside, “ somebody said, “in the other lock!” and Christian:

“Shit, open the doors, open the damn doors!”

“Austin. “ That was Beatrice, somewhere. “Austin, answer com!”

“Yeah, “ came back, through heavy static. “I got a problem. “ More of it, but it broke up.

Crew were trapped over in the other hold—trapped with a ricocheting mass of steel—and he’d done it. He had. He caught a hand-hold, no one caring, now, no one paying attention to him.

“What’s happened?” somebody asked, not the only voice. You didn’t chat on Universal when an emergency was in progress, you shut up. He thought that last voice might be the bridge asking information, but nobody answered. He tried to, on general: “Can of rods ruptured. “ Air still wouldn’t come fast enough. “Doors are shut, bridge—doors are shut, and that’s my ship out there, dammit!”

“Tommy?” Capella’s voice. “Tommy, it’s closing—it’s Sprite and us both the sumbitch is after,—Tommy, d’ you hear me? That’s the truth. “

Mind went scattershot, a dozen trails of logic—sounds in the dark, colors running—freighter, freighter screaming…

Capella, leaning close, whispering… touch of lips… saying… telling him…

“Tommy, we got to have the card, now, Tommy… Austin’s got to input. Hear?—Do it now, Tommy!”

Limbs jerked, half paralyzed, moving to what he couldn’t but half remember, just Capella’s voice and the gut-hitting feeling that he might have been immensely, irremediably wrong in his instant assumptions, Marie’s assumptions, beaten into him, dinned into him…

Not what he’d seen on this ship.

“Where’s Austin?” the bridge was asking, and he listened sharp, wanting to hear, when somebody, a voice he’d heard before, answered:

“Captain’s caught otherside. The other hold. They’re trying, Bea, they did an emergency close, and they got to jack the damn doors. “

“Shit, “ he heard, Capella’s voice. “Captain? You copy?”

The outer cargo hatch had closed on the mated rails. Crew was jacking it open, using levers at either side of the doors, others trying to scrape past the doors and under the cans blocking them to reach the hulk’s hold.

Tom slung himself that direction along the safety rail, no one stopping him on his careening course—was so shaken he strained his arm catching himself on the landing. But a man squeezed through ahead of him—he re-angled his body and hauled himself through, risking the LS kit on his back… felt it scrape as he entered the hulk.

His first sight in the hulk’s cargo lock was loose cans, debris floating, white powder in clumps and clouds, adhering to surfaces, obscuring vision throughout the cargo chute.

He had no idea now what he was doing, except they were trying to get crew out past him, one man that could move himself, that tried to help his rescuers. White powder, God knew what, clung to his visor no matter how he wiped. Loose rods shot past, still potent with v.

Then a suited body drifted toward him along the stalled row of cans. He grabbed its arm, not able to see who it was, whether the man was alive or dead, or who it was—he wasn’t moving, was all, and he hauled the man back to the cargo lock, through the whiteout of dust, and passed the man through the gap to the men on the other side—one life maybe they could save.

“Captain?” he was hearing on hail. “Captain? Seven minutes. Closing fast. “

And a second voice, Capella’s, he thought, desperate: “We need that key-card. Look in the console key slot, Tom, somebody. Fast. “

He knew what he was looking for. He tried to go in that direction, when a rod bounced past, hit the wall noiselessly, ricocheted and vanished into the powder-storm. And crew hauled suited bodies past him, a man with a piece of iron through the torso, then one with a helmet gouged and splintered across the faceplate.

TRAVIS, the helmet said.

Only name he’d made out, on anybody. Wasn’t Bowe. He found himself shakily relieved it wasn’t Austin, as he grabbed a rail and tried to get along the wall.

A suited figure caught up with him in the obscuring dust. BOWE, the helmet said. c. Smeared with blood. Christian looked straight at him. He started to ask… where Austin was… and his com crackled with,

“Damn you, you Hawkins bastard, get out of there!”

A rod shot between them. Rebounded. Hit a can, richocheted again, came back.

He was drifting, on a rebound. Grabbed something.

“Four minutes, “ he heard, in the ringing of his ears. Motion alert, was flashing in his faceplate. “Get out of there, “ com said, male voice this time, “Get out, now, we’re screwed, leave it, leave it, leave it. “

And Capella’s: “Get the card, damn it!”

His back hit the cans. He bounced off, saw a crewman near him, trying for a hand-hold, and he held out an arm, mindless free-fall reflex. The man grabbed him and he grabbed the rail as they grazed the wall in a conjoint tumble toward the bright light, spotlights all he could see in the white-out, except dark beads like frozen oil spatting against his faceplate.

He shoved off, dragging the man with him, grabbed the console rim and stopped their random motion as green seconds bled time away from him in the faceplate display. The man he’d rescued had hold next to him—crew had reached them, trying to pull both of them away; but the man shoved them off, shoved a card into the console they both clung to.

C. BOWE showed grey through the paste of white dust on the opposing helmet. He could see Christian’s face, intent on the card, not on him.

Other voices on Universal sputtered with static. Somebody was yelling, “Close the doors. Kick the cans clear! Shut the cargo doors! Fire window is forty-eight seconds—”

Christian jammed the card down, firm contact, groped for the input slate and the electronic stylus scissor-jointed over it.

Wrote an H. A.

Hand shook, dithered in a fit of shock. V.

“O,” Tom said, furious with his own spasm of shaking. Christian’s hand wasn’t making it. He grabbed the hand, forced a shaky circle. Shakier C. Son of a bitch, it wasn’t just himself and Austin knew Capella’s code.

Lights flashed. Display above the input said, in red letters:

ENEMY IDENTIFIED. TARGETING. POSITIVE.

He flashed on Sprite’s corridors. Marie at her console. But he believed Patrick was real, and Patrick was first on the old hulk’s list. His voice in the dark said so.

While Sprite was out there. Coming toward them. TARGET LOCKED, he saw on display, through a white haze.

FIRE INITIATED.

The hulk’s frame shook. He felt it through the hand-grip. Stared at his brother’s face, Christian staring at him.

Felt something pull at him, trying to pull them away. He held onto the console. But he saw suit lights then, coming around behind Christian, to take him away.

Christian went. But he wasn’t leaving. Wasn’t moving. No. Information was here. On this readout. It was all the truth he had.

“Tom, “ Saby said. Hands tugged at him, failed to move him. “Come on, Tom, dammit, it’s fired, it’s all we can do. “

“Tom. “ Tink’s voice. A new hand pulled and he couldn’t hold on any longer. His gloved hands lost their handhold, and they carried him back toward the doors, through the drifting white.

“Tom. “ Capella’s voice, then. “Tom, Sprite is not, so far, a target, repeat, not, so far, a target. “

“Who’s in command down here?” he heard somebody ask, and Christian answer:

“I guess I am. “

“Not yet. “ Another voice came faintly, scratchy with static. “Not yet, you don’t, kid.—Where’s the damn hostile, can somebody find the hostile?”

“Fireball, “ came from the bridge, smugly. “Any minute now. “

Still couldn’t get enough air. Tom let Saby and Tink pull him ahead, along the railing. He just breathed, his visor dusted over so the lights fuzzed.

“There it goes, “ a female voice said. “Austin. You copy? Got the bastard. “

“I copy, “ Austin said. “Thank you, Beatrice. “

He tried clumsily to adjust the air-flow. People talked to Medical, then, talked about broken arms and a suit puncture, one man dead. They said the cargo doors were shutting. But motion imminent had just gone off his faceplate display.

Nothing seemed real to him. Crew movement was all drifting now, leisurely. He heard Beatrice Perrault say,

“Evidently the robot respects a freighter ID. Or its direction, as nav believes. Sprite is, at any rate, sacrosanct. That gives us a new problem. “

“Screw that,” Tom said. New panic closed on him. Indignation. He shoved to get clear. “They’re not attacking my ship. “ He couldn’t break Tink’s grip. He shoved the channel selector with his chin. “Austin, damn you, that’s my ship, dammit, that’s my mother’s ship—”

“Put Hawkins in contact, “ Austin said faintly. “Beatrice. Dan. Do it.—Tom. “

“Sir. “

“That’s a word I like to hear. We still have them outgunned, Thomas Bowe-Hawkins. Remember that. Tell mama hello. “

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“Stand by. “ Voice he didn’t know. But after that:

“Go ahead, Hawkins. Talk them out of shooting. Or going away. The old hulk doesn’t like either one. “