Madelaine nudged JR’s arm with her wine glass. “Take a little extra care of my great-grandson. Don’t waste him in the junior-juniors. I know he’s an ass, but he’s got possibilities. Personal favor.”
JR drew in a slow, deep breath. He’d gotten snagged, broadsided, and boarded. Aunt Madelaine was the ship’s chief lawyer.
“I’ll try,” he said
“All you can do,” Madelaine agreed.
“Any special advice?” he asked Madelaine.
“For dealing with him? Grow all-over fur. The boy’s had no human ties. Damned Pell courts.” Sip of wine. The bottom of the glass, a little straw-colored liquid remaining. “Get me another wine, there’s a love. James has come. I won’t tell him what Fletcher did. None of us will. It just isn’t important.”
James Robert had come in, perhaps thinking he’d find a grateful, happy new member in the Family. Madelaine went in that direction, damage control, protection of her great-grandson, leaving him to get a refill at the bar, and one for himself while he was at it.
James Robert and Madelaine were in heavy discussion when he brought the wine. He put the glass in Madelaine’s outheld hand, offered his other on the moment to the Old Man, who hadn’t gotten across the room before Madelaine’s interception, and the Old Man murmured an abstracted thanks and took it.
Talk among the seniors: a Union ship just sitting out there, having run recovery on a bottle of Scotch. Quen and some high-powered agreement in their own vital interest. Madelaine said it was tariffs, which pointed to a political agreement inside the Alliance. The secrecy smelled to high heaven of some kind of operation of Mallory’s, while, third question, they were very publicly taking up trade again, in a move that had to be gossiped wherever merchanters docked… and the Fletcher incident had to dominate the gossip on Pell and everywhere else.
He had surmised their return to trade might be intended as a demonstration of Alliance power, a demonstration of the safety they hoped they’d created in the shipping lanes… at a critical moment when support of the starstation councils for the continued pirate hunt was wavering.
And at a time when Union was handing out special privileges to merchanters who wanted to sign on to wealthy Union instead of the economically struggling Alliance. He didn’t want to focus his career on fighting Union activity: he’d trained all his life to fight Mazianni, and that was where his interest was, but he could see that Union’s actions, actions which Quen would find of interest, constituted a smart move. Getting enough merchanters voluntarily signed into Union would win for Union without a shot what the War hadn’t gained for them by all the ordnance expended. If merchanters started drifting over the Line and signing with Union in any significant numbers the universe could see humanity polarized again into two major camps. Then, depend on it, merchanters would see themselves first regulated to the hilt, then entirely replaced by Union’s own ships: a merchanter desperate enough to clutch at Union financial support wasn’t analyzing his future further than the next set of bills.
It was the very situation that had started the War, the move to take over the merchanters this time coming not from Earth’s side, but from Union’s side of the border. One would think Union might have learned from Earth’s experience with the merchanters. Not so. The merchanters had formed their own state, at Pell, and with a handful of stations balancing commitment between the Merchanter Alliance and Union, and now Union started pushing to get the merchanters. The starstations independence would go next, and then they’d reach for Earth. If Mazian didn’t step in.
Or if Mallory and Quen and the Old Man of Finity’s End didn’t draw a line and say: no further.
And was that the message that went with the bottle in a black, starry sea? A warning—from Mallory and from Finity, Stay our allies? Don’t provoke us with your recruitments and your ship-building? Yours is the glass house?
It was certain in their own minds that Mazian had a secret base, somewhere within 20 lights of Pell, and that was an immense volume of space to search for someone determined not to be found. The rest of human habitation was concentrated in a comparatively small sphere at the center, where Mazian could strike without warning—and escape to that remote base.
It required a network of informants to establish any kind of security. Union didn’t have that network. Mallory did. Mallory—who was once of the Fleet. And they were such a network, they, the merchanters… who wouldn’t talk to Union or Alliance stationside officials with anything like the freedom with which they talked to each other.
From Mazian’s view, however, finding the heart of human civilization wasn’t a question of searching a 40-light sphere. It was a concentrated area Mazian could easily strike, without warning and with a choice of targets that could send chills down any civilized backbone. If a junior could venture a guess of his own, it was worse than that: Mazian’s aim might be to establish multiple bases, scattered points from which to threaten the center—and Mazian’s overriding strategy might not be a crushing military strike but rather evading Mallory, waiting for Union to get overconfident, and then maneuvering the Alliance or Earth into so deep a diplomatic crisis with Union that the Alliance had no hope except to forgive Mazian and recall him to take over the government. Then Mazian could use those bases to hit Union. But merchanters would bleed in the process.
Against that backdrop, the captains of Finity’s End had held their meeting with Quen and gotten some agreement out of her that they had wanted. Meanwhile they were going back to trading, Union was still refusing to let Alliance merchanters into its internal routes without them signing up as Union-based, and the Old Man had wanted Quen to bribe him into supporting her in some scheme of her devising.
What in hell game were they playing?
He went back to the bar, picked up a glass of wine for himself. Bucklin and Chad intercepted him on their own inquiry, having been out of the loop.
“So was that all about Fletcher?” Bucklin asked
“Some of it. Madelaine being his grandmother.” Great-grandmother, but in a Family’s tangled exogamous web of greats, second and third cousins and nieces and nephews on lives extended by time dilation and rejuv, you compressed generations unless you were seriously trying to track what you were to each other. “She’s taking a personal interest. She wants this kid in very badly.”
Silence greeted that revelation.
“About the drink,” JR said. “Let it slide. He didn’t know the rules. I’ll think about where he fits. He’s not Jeremy’s size. The body’s as mature as we are. The education’s just way behind.”
“Yeah, well.” Bucklin sighed, and they took their drinks and walked over to the rest of the junior-seniors, who’d staked out a table for eight. They pulled more chairs over, until it was a dense, tight group, Lyra, Toby, Ashley, Sue and Connor, Nike, Wayne, and Chad: as many different looks as they had star-scattered fathers. Lyra, a year younger than Bucklin and third in command, was the family’s sole almost redhead, sporting an array of earrings and bracelets she couldn’t wear in ops. Lyra, and beside her, Toby, whose brown complexion and shoulder-trailing kinky locks made that pair of cousins about as far apart as the Family genes stretched.
Lyra and Toby had brought a dedicated bottle of wine from the bar. Bucklin and he also had wine. The rest had soft drinks and fruit juice, and that was the line Fletcher had crossed without permission: Fletcher had assumed, maybe because he’d done it on station, that he had a right.