Tripoint (7 page)

“One more call,” he said, and went across the room to the phone.

Station line. It was clearer than the com with the music going full bore. He shielded one ear and listened to Miller’s chief tell him one more time that they were doing what they could, they’d gotten the part, well, yes, but with the union rules, they just couldn’t get a crew on.

“Yeah, I know that dance,” he said. “Look. I’m going to be traveling the next while. I’ll keep calling. You get somebody’s ass in there. Call in debts. You like dealing with us. You call in debts.”

“Look,” the answer came back, “there’s a limit to what we can do—”

“Look,
sir. “

“Yes, sir, Mr. Bowe, I understand that. I’m sorry, but—”

“Senior captain’s going to be in there, if this doesn’t get moving.”

“Yes, sir. I know. We’re working.”

He hung up, walked back to the bar and signed the tab. Capella showed up at his elbow and they left for the next bar, Capella doing this odd little step down the deck-plate joints.

Crazy as they came, but hyperspace operators of Capella’s ilk were, if possible, crazier than pilots, stayed high the whole ride and did as they damned well pleased—danced to a beat they claimed to hear in space, claimed to hear the stars, the echoes of the planets. Mean as hell, Capella was, but that was the high she gave when she tripped, the way she was tripping now—she’d take him, she’d take anything if he funked out, and watching over their junior apprentice hyper-jock and keeping her out of jail was Assignment Two. Austin wouldn’t like him if he let that happen, either… Capella wouldn’t be wrong, the hyper-jocks were never quite wrong, for the very reason the senior, book-following navigators and engineers never quite listened to them.

“Slow down, you.”

Capella danced back and grabbed him, whisked him into the next bar and onto the dance floor.

Capella was hell and away more fun than Miller Transship. Capella was a drug, a natural high—glitz flickered in the strobing lights, found patterns on her skin. The snake on her arm came alive and its eye on her wrist glowed metal red, leaving trails of fire. The bracelet of stars and Bok’s Equation glowed green—they could do that in the tattoo shops on Pell.

It drew attention. One drunk sod with a
Knight
patch on his sleeve wanted to dance with Capella, wanted to get up close, and there was damn all for her companion to do but object to that if Capella minded, but Capella grabbed the drunk and skipped away, contrived to maneuver him right off the dance zone and right into a tableful of
Lodestar’s
finest, who didn’t like their drinks spilled.

“Come on,” Capella laughed, grabbed his hand and ducked for the door before the riot spread beyond
Lodestar’s
vicinity.

Sunfire
was the next bar, all gold and neon reds, big glowing sun holo in the middle of the bar, and mirrors everywhere, sending the images up and down at angles to the original. The bar served up a specialty about the same colors, with a kick like a retro, and the dance floor was up a step, where if you weren’t sober you’d slide right down the edge. They were doing this number that involved back to back and turn, and then front to front and up close—

Which between the dizziness of the mirrored suns and the warmth of bodies and the shortness of breath, made the slanting edge a precarious thing.

Out onto the dock, then, carrying a couple of drinks—he’d remembered to sign the tab, that sober, at least, but they
knew
deep-haulers on leave, and they’d have tagged
Corinthian
, seeing the patch on him and on Capella—there had to be a hundred Corinthians on the dock at the moment, and somebody’d have signed the tab, if they’d have blown it, or they’d have gone to Austin, which you
didn’t
want to happen…

Meanwhile he’d gotten crazy enough he was linked arm in arm with Capella and trying to do her skip-step and pattern down the deck-plates.

“Chris!” someone female yelled from behind him.

Which confused his navigation, since the female he was with was beside him.

Which let him know he wasn’t thinking clearly, and
that
reminded him…

“Hell. I haven’t called Millers.”

“Christian!”

Familiar voice. Crew. Cousin.

“Oh, screw it,” Capella said, as he veered about. “She’s no fun.”

He blinked, sweating in the cold chill of dockside. A drop of condensation came down,
splat
! off some pipe overhead. That was Sabrina, ten years senior, and dead, dead serious, he saw that on her face.

“Christian, where in
hell’s
your com?”

He felt of his pocket. Pulled it out, and disengaged his arm from Capella.

The red light was on. God knew how long. Must have been beeping from time to time—somewhere under the music in the bar.

“You
and
Capella,” Saby said. “Deaf as rocks, both of you.
Sprite’s
inbound.”

Took him a couple of heartbeats. He was at a low ebb.

“Shit all,” Capella said, in the same second he placed the name and realized this was a definite emergency.

“Austin know?”

“Austin’s on it. What’s this about Miller? What’s this about a transport down?”

“They’re next-shifting it, I’ve been trying to move them. “ His navigational sense was shot to hell. He was on green dock, he could figure that. He ran a hand through his hair, blinked at Saby’s righteous sobriety. “Electrical problem, they tagged it, they know what it is. It’s the damn Viking unions, Miller could do the job themselves, except nobody can touch it.”

“We may be pulling out of here,” Saby said. “Austin’s furious, nobody can find Beatrice. I’d just get your rear down to Miller and tell them get the next shift up early, put it on our tab. We’re on recall, everybody with no business out. I’ll call in, say I’ve found you.”

“We’ve got cargo on dock,” he said, in the beginning of a cold, sober sweat. Austin
was
going to kill him. If worse didn’t come down. “We got cans on the dock.”

“Beatrice—” Saby began, but that was nonsense.

“
Find
Beatrice, if you can, and good luck—Capella, you get down to Miller and tell him his trade is on the line, don’t tell him why, tell him it’s major trouble, and if we get screwed we’ll take him with us.”

“Where are you going?”

Visions of cans in the warehouse, half of them re-labeled and half not. Visions of a broken transport stalled God knew where between
Corinthian
and Miller Transship’s warehouse with God knew what aboard, and he didn’t want to guess.

Sprite.

Hawkinses.

He had a
brother
on that ship. Half-brother, at least.

He was, on one level, curious. On another, he wasn’t. Not until they got those cans labeled.

“Tell Austin,” he said to Saby, “I’ll be in the warehouse, I’ve got the com on, I’m listening. Just let me straighten this out.”

“Christian,—”

“I’m fine, I’ll fix it.”

“Hell,” Capella said. “Listen to the woman.”

“Christian,—”

“We are exposed as
hell,”
he said to Saby, walking backward, a feat proving his sobriety, he decided, considering his recent alcohol intake. Austin didn’t want excuses. It was his watch.

He couldn’t screw this. “I’ll fix it. Tell Austin I’ll fix it, there’s no problem.”

“Answer your damn com after this!” Saby yelled at him. A loader was working somewhere. Human voices were very small, on the dockside, easily overwhelmed by the clash and bang of metal.

Capella caught his arm and spun him about.

“Better bribe the mechanics,” Capella said, with her curious faculty for realism, drunk or sober. “Cheaper than station brig, Chrissy-lad. Which we could all be in if we screw this. You got to sober up, spaceman. We got to get a watch on that ship when it comes in. Anybody comes around the dock, we just arrange a distraction.”

“We get the cargo moving,” he said. That was the absolute priority. Couldn’t just leave those cans on the dock. Austin was applying personal diplomacy to the mechanics, he was willing to bet that—
Corinthian
was as good as down-timed herself while Millers’ transport was stalled, stupid half-ass company owned theirs, which was why they dealt with them, but they were creaking antiques—

Didn’t want just any transport drivers
in
that warehouse anyway.

Emergency had him sweating in the cold air. A ship showed up that he’d never expected to meet—one they’d taken care for years not to meet. The karmic feeling, things happening that shouldn’t be.

And would Austin run, from Marie Hawkins? From a crazy woman? Hell. That wasn’t the Austin he knew.

He used the next public phone. He called into ship-com. He hoped not to deal with Austin.

“
Where the hell is your com
?” Austin’s voice came back to him.

“Sorry, I was in a noisy environment.”

“/
have a damned good idea where the hell you were, Christian. Save it. Did you get the message
?”

“Yes, sir.—But we’ve got a transport down. They’re trying to fix it. I didn’t think you wanted to be—”

“I’m awake. I’m bothered. I’m mad as hell and I’m calling Miller. We’ve moved the count up, we’ve got a serious problem, and I suggest you get your ass down there and get that cargo moved. Yesterday! I’m reassessing your file, mister, the same as any crew member who can’t do his job! You doubt me? You want to tell me how I owe you a living?”

“No, sir. I will—I’m doing that. No, sir, I know you don’t. “ The nerves twitched. They remembered. Austin meant exactly what he said, and it wasn’t necessary he have liberty again for the next three years if he pissed Austin any further. End report.

Capella had gotten sober, too. Entirely.

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—i—

APPROACHING INNER SYSTEM WAS a matter of hours, at a high fraction of
c
.

Dumping that velocity while they could still graze the interface was a relatively easy matter.

Working at station-proximity speeds to get a high-mass freighter into a rotating station, on the other hand, was a tedious, nerve-wracking operation. Always be aware of the nearest take-hold point. Stay out of the lift except on business. Stay out of fore-aft corridors. Keep belted when seated or asleep.

Meaning that trim-ups might be rare when a long-hauler was following the computer-directed approach—no pilot flew docking by the seat of the pants—but stations were debris-generators, thick with maintenance and service traffic and escaped nuts, bolts and construction tiles, and, while in the zone of greatest risk a freighter pilot was no-stop, come hell or the Last Judgment, or absent anything but damage to the docking apparatus (meaning any pusher-jock in a freighter’s approach path was a bump and a noise and a gentle course-correction), the possibility of evasive maneuver did exist. That meant the children battened down in the cushioned Tube in the loft, in which they could take most any vector-shift; and crew off and on duty found themselves a definite place to Be for the duration.

Which in Marie’s case was her office; and in a junior computer tech’s, it was the bridge. Load the file, wait for the check, load another file, wait for the check.

It left too much time for said junior tech to think, between button punches, in his lowly station sandwiched in with seven other cousins at the tail of the bridge.

It left too much time to rehearse the session with Mischa, and the one with Marie, comparing
those
mental files for discrepancies, too, but you never caught them out that easily. They didn’t outright lie in nine tenths of what they told you. They were brother and sister. They had grown up conning each other. They’d learned it from each other if nowhere else. And they were good at it. He wasn’t.

Heredity, maybe. Like the temper Mischa said did him no favors. He was, if he thought about it, scared as hell, figuring Marie wasn’t done with double-crosses. Marie didn’t trust him.

And, when it came down to the bottom line, Marie would use him, he knew that in the cold sane moments when he was away from the temptation she posed to think of her as mama and to think he could change her. Get that approval (she always dangled) in front of him, always a little out of possible reach.

But nothing mattered more to Marie than dealing with that ship. And if Marie was right and she smelled something in the records that wasn’t right with
Corinthian
—you could depend on it that she’d been tracking them through every market and every trade she could access long-distance—she might have files down there in cargo that even Saja didn’t know about. Files she could have been building for years and years and never telling anyone.

Load and check, load and check. He could push a few keys and start wandering around Marie’s data storage—possibly without getting caught, but there were a lot of things a junior tech didn’t know. The people who’d taught him undoubtedly hadn’t taught him how to crack their own security: the last arcane
items
were for senior crew to know and mere juniors to guess. So it was load and check, load and check, while his mind painted disaster scenarios and wondered what Marie was up to.

Supper arrived on watch. The galley sent sandwiches, so a tech had one hand free to punch buttons with. Liquids were all in sealed containers.

On the boards forward in the bridge, the schemata showed they were coming in, the numbers bleeding away rapidly now they were on local scale.

A message popped up on the corner of his screen.
At dock. See me. Marie
.

—ii—

MARIE LEANED BACK FROM THE CONSOLE, seeing the
Received
flash at the corner of her screen. So the kid was at work. The message had nabbed him.

He’d arrive.

The numbers meanwhile added themselves to a pattern built, gathered, compared, over twenty-four years. How shouldn’t they?
Corinthian
was what it was, and no ship and no agency that hadn’t had direct and willing information from
Corinthian
itself could know as much about that ship as she did.