Rimrunners (38 page)

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!

CHAPTER 28

« ^ »

She slept awhile, she didn't even remember lying down. She just woke up in a

back-tilted chair with a blanket over her, staring at the lights.

Remembered too much, then, twisted over to see where NG was, and found him

folded over at the next station counter, taking a nap of his own, probably with

the auto-alarm set. He'd put her kit and a change of clothes on the counter by

her: she got up carefully, stiff and sore as hell—and made her trip to the head.

Not easy to do a thorough scrub in that cubby, from a recessed tap, but it

helped.

NG had set her stuff up for her, took care of her, NG, who never took two

thoughts beyond his own necessities—

Maybe, she thought, maybe he was more upset than he showed, and he was putting

everybody off their guard so he could do something stupid like go after Fitch—

But a man with his thinking in a muddle didn't steady down the way he had,

didn't suddenly start tracking on his job the way he'd been doing, now, she

added it up, ever since he'd found out he couldn't shake her or Musa or Bernie

off his tail.

Like he'd been drifting in his private space until he got this beacon—Somebody

else out here, man, somebody solid—pay attention, now—I got information for you—

Maybe it'd been like that for her, she thought, the last several years. Maybe

that was what made him impossible for her to let alone: he was the voice in her

dark too, saying I know what you've seen. You don't have to make sense. You

don't have to explain a thing. It's not a requirement here…

Hell of a time to figure things out, Yeager.

She came back into Engineering with that thought, she came and bent over his

chair with the intention of waking him up, telling him that, telling him at

least how she felt—

But it was too embarrassing, and she went muddle-headed when she thought about

talking to him like that. Maybe he didn't feel like that, maybe what he felt was

something crazier, or saner, and it wasn't fair to push personal stuff on him.

People opened their mouths and put personal loads on each other, and embarrassed

each other beyond anything they could ever patch, was all they were likely to

do, when everything was already all right and it could go along forever as long

as people didn't say stupid things to each other.

So keep your mouth shut, Yeager, just wake him up and be nice, you got to leave

pretty soon. Last thing you can do is duck out on him without a goodbye.

She bent down, blew on the hair at his temple, moved back when he woke up, to

save her jaw.

"Was going to give you a nice wake-up," she said, "but you move too quick."

He rubbed a stubbled face. He looked like hell. He muttered something, dragged

himself up, patted her on the shoulder, and went to gather up his own kit by the

door, headed for a wash-up.

So she sat by herself, she watched the little numbers on the screens until he

came back, which wasn't long. He hadn't shaved, just washed up a bit, and he got

them a couple of soft drinks and a couple sandwiches out of the locker at

station one.

She drank. She couldn't face eating. She tucked the sandwich in her pocket.

"I'll keep it for later," she said, and deliberately didn't look at the time.

Take care of yourself, she wanted to say. But that sounded too much like

goodbye. She wanted to go over things with him, to make sure he was agreeing

with her, but that was her nerves it was for, no good for his.

"Yeager," com said. "Report topside. Five minutes."

"Damn," she said.

NG reached out and grabbed her hand. Held on a second.

"Got to answer that," she said, and stood up and pulled away before she did

something, said something, they didn't have the time to deal with. "I got to get

Fitch settled—"

"Don't trust him. Don't trust him."

"Yeager! Battle ready! No fuckin' time, Yeager"!

"Oh, shee-it!" Her heart jumped, the body did, she left the chair-arm and turned

around and grabbed him, hard, said: "That's it, that's all of it—get off this

ship"!

The siren started. She tore away and ran, banged the edge of the doorway, jumped

for the corridor deck and sprinted for the lift.

Didn't tell him goodbye, didn't even look back until it was too late and she was

headed around the curve, and only a fool would ignore that siren and delay for a

backward glance.

She wanted to tell him to suit up, wanted to stand over him and be sure he did.

He could be a fool, damn him, she'd told him too much—

God, the clock by ops showed less than six hours, there could be something loose

scan hadn't counted, hadn't spotted, hadn't anticipated—

Damn Goddard! Damn Fitch! You dealt with the Fleet, you dealt with carriers and

rider-ships, too many pieces loose in any situation to take chances with—

She hit the lift, she hit the button and after that it moved at its own rate,