James Robert told him plainly what he’d always seen about the program: that if you didn’t believe what they said, follow their rules, you were out. And he’d hedged it all the way, being new, following his dream, living his imaginings… not looking at…
Not looking at what James Robert told him, that the Base wanted someone like Nunn, someone who’d follow rules, not push them—because what ran the human establishment on Downbelow wasn’t on Downbelow. It was on Pell.
“You get a few ports further,” the Old Man said. “We’ll talk again. You have a good time in this one, that’s my recommendation.”
The Old Man hadn’t ever mentioned the fight. The hazing. Any of it. Or changed JR’s assignment of him.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll try to. Thank you.”
The Old Man nodded. JR opened the door, let him out.
And came outside with him.
“Fletcher,” JR said.
He turned a scowling look on JR, daring him to comment on personal matters.
“I didn’t set you up to fail,” JR said. “Any help you want, I will give you.”
“Thank you,” he said. He couldn’t beg JR to forget what he’d heard. He had to leave it on JR’s discretion, whatever it might be, without trusting it in the least. He left, back to the laundry, thinking… they’d talked about peace, and he’d believed everything the Old Man said while he was saying it. It gave him the willies even yet, when he considered that this ship hadn’t been trading for a living for seventeen years.
The Old Man said they were looking for peace, and that none of them knew what it looked like.
He thought of Jeremy, talking of going to Mallory, carrying on the fight. Of Jeremy, shivering in the bunk approaching jump, because the kid was scared.
The youngest of them had seen the least of what the Old Man said they were looking for. They called it peace, when the Treaty of Pell had stopped Union from going after the former Earth Company stations, when the stations agreed to host the Merchanters’ Alliance and Earth disavowed the Fleet… but the Fleet hadn’t surrendered. And there wasn’t any peace.
And the oldest downer had gone back to her world to watch the heavens and believe for her people.
Believing that there was something more, though she’d seen what war looked like. Believing there’d be something else—when for thousands upon thousands of years the Watcher-statues had watched the heavens, waiting…
For what? Visitors?
What peace? he should have asked the Old Man when he had the chance. What does this ship have to do with it, when all it’s done is fight? What are we doing, when you say we’re looking for peace? None of the juniors know what it is, for very damn sure.
When did I say yes? When did I even start listening?
Anger tried to find another foothold. Resentment for being conned.
But this was a ship that had meant important things in the recent past.
What if? he began to ask himself. He, who’d met Satin, and looked into her eyes.
“Got chewed out, hey?” Vince asked when he got back to the laundry, and he just smiled.
“No,” he said in perfect good humor. “I just got put in charge of you three.”
Vince’s mouth stayed open. And shut.
“You’re kidding,” Linda said.
“No,” he said. Jeremy grinned from ear to ear.
Chapter 15
Liberty was coming. The mood all over the ship was excitement, anticipation. The junior-juniors’ attention for anything was scattered: liberty and stationside and games were coming after days of duty and sticking by their posts.
It was, Fletcher thought as the ship prepared for docking, air to breathe—wider spaces, not corridors, not the unsettling pervasive thrum that he’d grown used to and that he now knew was the ring in its constant motion. Where they’d exit in less than an hour wasn’t going to be Pell, but it was a place that would look like Pell, feel like Pell, be like Pell. He could do things ordinary people did on stations, walk curves less steep than Finity’s deck—go to a shop, look at tapes. Maybe buy one. He was due a little money, a little cash, they’d said, for incidentals. If he skipped a meal or two, he could buy a tape.
A third of personnel, including the bridge, and older crew, whose personal quarters were in areas that would be downside during dock, could simply sit in quarters during docking and undock, if they chose to do that. For the seniormost crew not so blessed by the position of their cabins during ring lock-down, there was the small theater topside, where a pleated floor (Jeremy had explained this wonder of engineering), solid seating and safety belts were available. The whole theater became stairsteps.
But for the able-bodied, they packed them into rec like sardines, and they rode it through with takeholds and railings, just the way they’d done in undock. The junior-juniors disdained the theater. Jeremy said docking was more fun than undock.
Fletcher secretly wished they’d offered him a theater seat with the ship’s oldest. But, with Jeremy, he went down the corridor with his duffle, joining all the other crew doing the same thing. There was a chute, Jeremy had forewarned him, where you sent your duffle down to cargo; your baggage would meet you on the docks. It was why you tied silly personal items to your duffle strings and had your name stencilled in large letters. His was just what he’d boarded with, plain, distinctive only in that it wasn’t worn and stencilled. He’d put a ship’s tag on it, Jeremy’s recommendation. He’d tied a bright civvy sock to the tag strings, the only thing he owned amenable to serving as ID. He’d not brought anything in his baggage but clothes and toiletries. And watching the way the duffles went down the chute he was glad he’d packed nothing else.
“They’re not damn careful,” he said.
“Warned you,” Jeremy said brightly, “They’re more careful coming back. That’s the good thing. They know the incomings got fragiles.”
The rec hall was transformed again. Machines and tables were out. The safety railings were back. He and Jeremy stood, indistinguishable from the mob of other silver-suited Finity crew, Linda and Vince each with senior crew protectively spaced between them as Finity glided toward dock and occasional decel forces shoved gently at the ship.
“Decoupling,” the intercom said. “Condition yellow take hold.”
That meant real caution. Next thing to Belt-in-if-you-can. Don’t let go to scratch your nose.
Gravity ebbed. Fletcher’s stomach went queasy. Don’t let me be sick. Don’t let me be sick. It’s nerves. It’s just nerves. Nothing out of the ordinary’s going on.
“Condition red take hold.”
“Hold on tight,” Jeremy said.
Big jolt. Not too bad, he thought.
Then a giant’s hand grabbed them and suddenly slung everyone in the room hard against the rails with a crash and a bang that echoed through the frame.
No one came loose. No one screamed. Fletcher thought his sore fingers had dented the safety rail and his neck felt whiplash.
“That was the grapple,” Jeremy said cheerfully, on the general exhalation and mild expletives in the room, and added, “We’re carrying a lot of mass.”
“I could live without that.” Fletcher congratulated himself he hadn’t screamed. His stomach was the other side of the wall. Jeremy had let go the rail to stretch his back. “We didn’t hear an all clear.”