Rimrunners (32 page)

jump like he was wired if somebody touched him unexpected, he'd tense up when

people came up on him, he'd do this little subtle flinch when he knew people

were going to speak to him. You had to know him to know it was a flinch, but he

was just on-alert all the time, schiz as hell, trying so damned hard, and sane

enough to be scared, himself, that somebody was going to startle him and he was

going to blow up—he held onto her and Musa like they were his lifeline, that was

what he was doing at breakfast, with people asking him how he was doing, how's

the head, NG?

Hughes had just made himself scarce. Headed off to work early, thank God.

And NG was doing all right, so far, with social acceptability cold sober, doing

all right and once, with Freeman, even managing a thin, tentative grin… not the

smartass one, the real, wide-open one.

Doing just fine until they got to Engineering and Bernstein met them with:

"Yeager, Mr. Orsini wants to see you."

"It's all right," she said to NG, and touched his arm. "I know what about. No

problem."

"What?" NG asked her point-blank, delaying her at the door. "Fitch?"

"They're just trying to figure out some things." Best lie she could manage.

"Fitch won't lay a hand on me. You can believe it."

So she checked out of Engineering before she'd even checked in, didn't say a

thing to Bernstein about last night, and Bernstein didn't say anything to her.

Probably Bernstein and Orsini had talked. Orsini and the captain would have.

Maybe the captain and Fitch—last night, his day, after she had left.

So she went up-rim to Orsini's office, she sat down and she got what she thought

she would, question after question, while Orsini took notes on the TranSlate.

Nossir, nossir, yessir, nossir, I don't know anything about ops, sir.

At least Orsini didn't act as if he was out to kill her.

"You have a problem with Mr. Fitch," Orsini said.

"I hope not, sir."

"You have a problem," Orsini said.

"Yessir."

"I trust you won't be stupid about it."

"I don't plan to be, sir."

Orsini gave her a long, long look. And started asking other questions, the kind

she didn't want to answer.

Specific detail, on Africa, on her cap, what she carried, how many she carried—

I don't know, she said sometimes. Sometimes she shied off, inside, but she

couldn't do that—had to make the jump, finally, and be Loki's, or not, and talk

or not.

What can I tell them that Mallory couldn't? Hell, they got a renegade Fleet

captain giving them any cap they ask. What's anything I know worth, against

that!

So she answered, sat there telling things that might help kill her ship, one

little detail and the other and deeper and deeper—far as a belowdecks skut could

betray her ship, she did that—

Because here was here, that was what she kept telling herself. Because the war

was lost, whatever it had ever been for, and Teo was dead, and the ship she was

on was all that had to matter anymore—

Nothing to go back to. Pirates, people called the Fleet now. Maybe that was so.

"War's over," Orsini said. "There's nothing Mazian can win. Not in the long run.

Just pointless destruction. Just more casualties. Best thing Mazian could do for

his people is come in, sign the armistice—take what he's got coming and save the

poor sods on his ships. But he won't do that."

She saw the docks again, being stationside, permanently, doing station scut, if

they didn't do a wipe on you and leave you too schiz to defend yourself. Or

there was Thule, maybe, one damn great hole they could dump all Alliance's

problems into, same as they'd dumped Q-zone.

Hell if they'd come in. Hell if they would.

"Let's get specific again," Orsini said, and she didn't want to, didn't want to

talk for a while, kept thinking about Teo and wondering if Bieji was still alive

on Africa.

Bieji'd give her one of his black looks and tell her no hard feelings, but he'd

try to blow her ass away.

Stay alive, Junker Phillips used to yell, stay alive, you stupid-ass bastards, I

got too much invested in you—

"Yeager?"

"Yessir," she said. Here and now again. This ship, these mates.

Nothing personal, Bieji.

She sat there finally, throat sore from talking, Orsini note-taking again.

She thought, What I've done, there's no halfway, is there? Can't betray these

mates, and them.

She wanted to go somewhere and take a pill for her back and her head, she wanted

to have a bath and see NG's face and Musa's and be back in rec with her shift,

and remember why she wanted this ship. Right now she couldn't, right now she

couldn't remember anything but Africa, couldn't see anything but Bieji and Teo

and how it had been—

But those had been the good years. Those were the years before she'd lived off

Africa, before she'd seen Ernestine, been from Pell to Thule and wherever they

were now—

—older, maybe. Tired. Maybe just taking any out better luck might give her. She

wasn't sure, unless she could feel what she felt on this ship again and shake

the devils Orsini called up.

Orsini put down the stylus and got up from his desk, going to send her back down

to Engineering, she thought: there was still time enough before the shift

change.

God, she had to go back and go on pretending there was nothing wrong…

Had to tell NG somehow—before he found it out from somebody else.

"I want to show you something," Orsini said, motioning to the door.

"Sir?"

He didn't answer that. He showed her out, up-rim toward the bridge, to a stowage

locker. He opened the door and turned on the lights.

Like so many corpses, pale, fire-scarred body-shapes stood belted to the left

wall.

Armor.

Africa, one stencil said. Europe, the other. And names.

Walid—M. Walid.

Memory of a small, dark man, grinning. Always with the jokes.

God…

Orsini was looking at her. She walked into the locker, laid a hand on the one

rig. "Knew this man," she said. And then, afraid Orsini would read a threat into

that: "Acquaintance, anyway."

"Collected it at Pell," Orsini said.

"You could've got mine," she said. "Left it there."

"Maybe your friend was lucky."

She shook her head.

"They're not in good shape," Orsini said. "Figured to use them in emergencies:

figured they were free, why turn them down? Lifesupport halfway works, most of

the servos operate on that one—it'll move, at any rate, but nobody's got time to

fix it."

"Not real comfortable," she said, thinking, God, the damn fools, with a gut-deep

memory of what a human joint felt like with a servo pushing it just a little

past reasonable, wondering if Mallory who must've let them have the rigs had

ever provided the manuals. She touched the surfaces, tried the tension in the

arm, felt her stomach upset at what was going on in her brain, all the old

information coming up like pieces of a disaster—parameters, connections—

—her hands were close to shaking. It was Africa's gut, the armor-shop, the

voices she hadn't been able to recall, the smells and the sounds—

"Fixable?" Orsini asked.

"Yessir," she said, and looked at him, trying to see the white plastic lockers

and Orsini's face, not the gray, echoing space she remembered. She said, knowing

nobody gave a damn, "But I don't want to."

"Why?"

I don't want to handle this stuff again. I don't want to think about it—

She said, realizing she had stirred suspicion, "Thought I was through with rigs

like this." Then another reason hit her, in the gut. "And I don't want people to

know where I come from."

Orsini said, quietly: "Can you get these things working right?"

"Yessir, probably."

Man wasn't paying attention, man didn't care. She didn't expect otherwise.

"No need to have it general knowledge," Orsini said. "We're insystem, slow rate,

going to dock here and fill. You can make it back and forth up the lift. You've

got enough level deck here."

She looked at the L by the entry, thought about what she could get to in the

shop. "Yessir." Without enthusiasm. It was in-dock work he meant and no liberty.

But she hadn't really expected one, under the circumstances. "Not real easy. But

I could do that."

"Not all crew gets liberty," Orsini said. "Takes five years' seniority. And the

captain's approval."

"Yessir."

"You might eventually get a posting out of it," Orsini said. "If you have the

right attitude."

She stood there thinking, Right attitude. Hell. And thinking that the mofs could

think they owned these rigs, but you didn't just suit up and have everything

work. She didn't say, Who am I supposed to fit this for? and explain that part

of it; or think she had to say something if Orsini didn't.

Maybe Orsini would call that a bad attitude.

She just said, "I'll see what I can do, sir."

CHAPTER 23

« ^ »

The news about their heading into dock was on general com when she headed back

for Engineering, forty-odd minutes to shift-change.

"Everything all right?" Bernie asked, asking more than that, she reckoned, and

she frowned at him, just not able to come back from it and knowing she had

to—had to put a decent face on things and not do anything that could make

Bernstein wonder about her, because Bernie was watching, Bernie was going to be

making regular reports to Orsini and Wolfe and maybe Fitch, and she knew it. You

asked a body to be a turncoat and you'd better keep an eye on them, if you had

any respect at all for them.

Damn right, sir.

Nor trust them if they smiled at you.

She said, "Wasn't a real good time, sir."

Bernie looked sad at that. But at least he didn't frown back at her.

"Anything the matter?" NG said—NG the first one to come up to her, on his own,

when you never used to get NG out front on anything.

She said, thinking fast, "Looks like I don't get a liberty."

It wasn't what NG had worried about, for sure. He looked upset, touched her arm.

"Hell, I never have had. I'll be here."

Got her right in the heart. She couldn't think for a second, couldn't remember

what she'd decided two beats ago her story was, or put any organization in her

thoughts.

NG'll be on board. Him and me. God.

"You didn't expect it," Musa said, from beside her.

"Dunno, didn't think, till they made the announcement; and Orsini told me it was

five years. Shit, Musa—"

She didn't want to think about months and years. A week was hard enough, NG

bound to ask what she was doing topside while they were in dock, or why Orsini

had her out of main Engineering, going back and forth between the shop and

topside.

Damn!

Musa gave her a hug around the shoulders, friendly, Bernie didn't mind a little

PDA, NG didn't say anything else, back in his habit of no-comment, and she tried

to cheer up, which she reckoned made it a tolerably good act.

Damn, damn, and damn.

They did a burn before shift-change, they started doing others, after.

"We'll be docking at Thule Station …" Wolfe said on general address.

She felt sick at her stomach.

Wonder if Nan and Ely are still there. How long've we been out, realtime?

She counted jumps they had made, figured maybe as much as a year, stationside.

She stowed everything she wouldn't need, stuffed a duffle with things she would,

same as those who were going stationside—"Hard luck, Bet," people dropped by to

say, and some few of them, McKenzie included, were cheeky enough to say, "Yeah,

well, but you and NG got free bunks and all the beer aboard.—Want me to buy you

anything?"

She checked with the purser's office and found out she could draw on her liberty

money even being held aboard, and that NG was downright affluent, never having

used his liberty credits except for on-board beers.

"Vodka," she said to McKenzie, trusting him with a sizeable draft on her

account. "Walford's is cheap, Green dock, listen, I got some incidentals I need,

stand you three bottles if you hit supply for me."

"Hell," McKenzie said, "give us a list. Nobody's in port but us, we got to make

do with dockers, and you know Figi's going to be in a damn card game from the

time he hits—Park and me can go shopping, buy you anything you want."

"You're a love," she said, feeling better for the moment, and took McKenzie off

in the corner and exchanged about twenty concentrated minutes of accumulated

favor-points.

Real special, this time, rushed as it was—hard to know what it was, maybe that

they were both in a desperate hurry, and taking time to be mutually polite,

maybe just that they'd gotten beyond acquainted and all the way over to looking

out for each other.

She wanted that right now, wanted somebody it just wasn't complicated with, who

cared about her; and she hurt her back doing it and didn't regret it later, when

the take-hold was sounding and she hauled thirty kilos of hammock and duffle

down to the stowage area to clip in and hang on with the rest of alterday and

most of mainday.

Not the mofs. Mofs and a few of the mainday tekkies got to ride the lift down