“I’m going off them,” Dekker said. His hand with the fork was shaking. Badly.—A real mess, Ben thought. Wonderful. We’re supposed to go out with this guy. This is going to be at the controls out there.
Dekker did look up then, shadow-eyed as if he hadn’t slept much. “I cut you off yesterday. If the offer’s still open—I’d like to talk about it.”
“Offer’s open,” Bird said. Ben thought: Hell.
Dekker didn’t say anything for a moment, just stirred his eggs around on his plate. Then a second look at Bird. “So I want my license back. What’s the time worth?”
“Depends on your work,” Bird said.
Ben did a fast calc, what Dekker had, what gave them a solid return on putting up with him. “10 k flat. With a guarantee you getthe license.”
Dekker looked bewildered—maybe a little overcome at the price and notunderstanding the quality of what he’d just thrown in. Hewasn’t exactly sure why he’d thrown it in—except he’d had this nanosecond of thinking he’d asked high and Bird was already on his tail. So it just fell out of his mouth: There you are, fancy-boy, Ican fix it, Ican, so you damned sure better mind your manners with me.
Bird didn’t say anything, Dekker didn’t, so Ben added, with a certain satisfaction, “Fair, isn’t it? Guaranteed, class 1.”
Bird looked a little worried. But he still didn’t say anything.
“Whose guarantee?” Dekker asked.
Ben gave him a cold stare. “Mine. On the other hand, if you ask anybody the time, Dekker, if you pull anyshit on us out there, you’ll take a walk bare-assed.”
“Ben,” Bird said.
“I’m serious,” he said, and Dekker looked worried.
“Ben’s all right,” Bird said. “He really is.”
Dekker said, finally, “I haven’t got any other offers.”
“Small wonder,” Ben said, and realized that he’d broken his resolution a tick before Bird glared at him.
Dekker glared at him too. Dekker said, “I’ll pull my weight.”
Ben said, “Damn right you will. You’ll do whatever you’re told to do. And you’ll put up with whatever shit you’re handed, whatever you think of it—with no gripes.”
Bird said, “Ben,—”
Dekker glumly reached across the table. It took a moment before Ben realized he wanted his hand, that Dekker was truly calling his bluff and taking the deal.
Damn, Ben thought. He had as soon stick his hand in a grinder, but things with Bird were precarious. So he made a grimace of a smile, gave Dekker his hand and they made a limp, cheerless handshake across the plates.
No one looked convinced, not Dekker, not Bird. Hecertainly wasn’t. But he said, “All right, if we’re going to do this, let’s get that re-cert application in right now. I take it you haven’t done that.”
“No craters,” Meg said as they walked out into the bar. They’d come in late last shift, they’d slept late, gotten up and come out on the absolute tail end of breakfast. No Dekker, no Bird, no Ben. Meg shoved her hands into her pockets and looked at Mike over at the bar. Sal looked too, with a lift of the eyebrows.
“They kill each other?” she wondered.
Mike said, dishing up the last of the rubbery eggs, “Left like old friends, all three. Said tell you they were going up to the dock. They’re leaving you a pile of scrub-up and sanding in the shop.”
“Fun,” Sal sourly.
“Ben with Dekker?” Meg said, with a gathering worry. “Not damn likely. We got a problem here.”
Sal poured her own coffee and took the plate Mike handed her. “Kady, I think we got to use strategy.”
“What strategy? I vote we shoot Ben.”
“Na, na, he’s playing along with Bird.” Sal took the plate and the coffee back to the table and hooked a chair out, as Meg did the same. “We got, what, three weeks if we push it. If Dek’s able to pitch in. The guys are going to be trouble. Trez macho.”
“Trez pain in the ass. If Birdtakes a position you need a pry-bar.”
“We can’t have Ben and Dekker in the same ship. That’s prime.”
“So Bird takes Dekker—and wetake Ben.” That, come to think of it, wasn’t at all a bad idea. They’d been after Ben’s numbers for two years. Thatwas solid and Shepherd promises were come-ons and maybes.
Besides which, if there was anybody who could keep Dekker in line—
Sal ducked her head, checked in her pocket a beat—God, smoothmove, there, Meg thought, with a knot in her stomach; and Sal looked up with the devil’s own ideas in her eyes. “ I’lltell you what we do, Kady, we apply to go out tandem. Allof us. I’ll tell you why.” A jab of Sal’s finger on the tabletop. “Because Bird doesn’t want Dekker sliced and stacked. Because Bird’s had one trip with Ben and Dekker already and if we give him the out to break that up—we ask for even split on the board time, just to make him believe it, we set it up with the Bitch, and we get Ben and his numbers andaccess to Dekker.”
“Hell, we have got a ship coming out of refit. Shakedown run.”
“That’s the grounds. Only reason they’ll do it.”
“A skosh noisy. Do we need MamBitch’s special attention on us? I don’tthink a special app is a good idea.”
“Kady, we gotthe Bitch’s attention. I’ll ask my friends, but I don’t know what worse we can do. And ifthey say do it, and if She’ll let us—hell, if we can get out there tandem, we can just do our job, just ride it out while the shit flies, as may, and figure things are getting taken care of—they’re notgoing to arrange anything on the way out, not unless they’re pushed, and if the Association brings it up as an issue, damn surethe Bitch isn’t going to run us into a rock on the way back. There’s coincidences and there’s coincidences. They’re just a little from having the EC down their throats.”
You had to wonder whether more understandings might have passed in that little encounter at Scorpio’s than Sal had even yet admitted: and MamBitch beaming them up to von a heading MamBitch picked—on charts that might have a little technical drop-out right in their path—hadn’t helped her sleep at all. MamBitch was finally admitting in the news how she might go grievance procedures with the Shepherds to settle the outstanding complaints and patch up the sore spots—MamBitch having this severely important production schedule to meet, because the Fleet High Command was breathing down her neck.
That was the public posture. Behind the doors in management there were careers on the line.
There was the Shepherds’ whole existence on the line.
“I tell you,” she said to Sal over the eggs, “I’d sincerely like to know if you know anything additional—now or in future.”
“If I know you’ll know.” A solemn look. “I swear.”
“Thanks,” she said. She did try to believe it.
A berth with the Shepherds, Sal said. It was already an endangered species. And they themselves were fools to think otherwise: you got out of the habit of longterm thinking—when the only out you had was a break in a business that was already taking the deep dive to hell. Freerunners weren’t going to last forever. Go with the lease deal or go for broke Sal’s way— seeif the Shepherds kept their bargains, or if there was a bargain—or if the Shepherds were still independents when the shakeout came.