“It could have that intention,” Charles T. said. “That’s why Boreale is going with us.”
“What they think,” said another cousin, turning around from the row in front, “is that Champlain—that’s the ship in question—is going to report somewhere ahead of us. It’s an outside possibility it might want to take us on. But not two of us. Boreale’s a merchanter only in its spare time, and it’d like that ship to make a move. If we can build a case that ship’s Mazianni, there are alternatives we can take at Voyager.”
“They’ve had a watch on our hull the whole time we’re here,”a third cousin said. “So we’re clean.”
Watching for what? Fletcher wondered uneasily, but his mind leapt to uneasy conclusions.
“Don’t suppose they’ve watched theirs?” Charles T. said with a wicked grin.
“Tempting,” Parton said.
The juniors were all ears. Even Jeremy.
Another flood of cousins poured in. “Ten minutes,” the intercom said in the same moment. “We’ve got a potential bandit, gentle cousins, but our intrepid allies out of Union space are going to pace us in fond hopes of getting the goods on the rascals. We’ll make specific safety announcements before jump, but we’re clearing dock in plenty of time for Champlain to figure the odds, which we think will discourage a wise captain from lingering to meet us in the jump-point. We will be doing an unusual system entry just in case our piratical friends have strewn our path with any hindrances, and we will post the technicals on the maneuver for those of you who have a curiosity about the matter. Welcome aboard, welcome aboard, welcome aboard. We hope your hangovers are less than you deserve. Fare well to Belize and Mariner, and fond hopes for Esperance. Voyager will be a working port, we regret to say, with restricted liberty and fast passage.”
There were groans.
“We’re going to work?” Vince cried indignantly.
“Sounds like an interesting stop,” a cousin said. “Are we hauling this trip, or how much did we load?”
Time spun down. A last few cousins ran in, JR and Bucklin among them. Chad, Connor and Sue followed, and then the rest of the juniors… probably on duty, Fletcher said to himself. The icy mess in the corridor was a likely junior job, of the sort that wouldn’t wait for undock, during which icemelt could run and metal grids could slide.
Odd thought… how much he’d gotten to figure out without half thinking about it. His ship. His junior-juniors. His roommate. He’d been out on liberty, he’d come back in charge of three kids who’d come around somehow to admitting that seventeen waking years beat twelve and thirteen in a lot of respects: he’d been in his element, and the one he was coming back to wasn’t foreign, either, now.
He knew these people. He knew the sounds he’d heard before, and wished there were a way to ask, when the undocking started, exactly what sound was what. He’d stood and watched ships undock, from outside, and the lights would be flashing and the hatches would seal, and the access tube would retract. Then the lines would uncouple, the gantry arm would pull back.
Then the grapples. That was the loud one. The jolt. Somebody started a loud and rowdy song, that subbed in the word Belize, and he found himself with a grin on his face as Finity’s End came free and powered back from dock.
One song topped another one, and they ran out of the rowdy ones and into the sentimental, good-bye to the port, good-bye to lost loves…
He had an urge to chime in, but he was too conscious of the juniors beside him and he couldn’t sing worth a damn. He could listen. He could feel a little shiver of gooseflesh on his arms, a little shortness of breath when the song wound on to foreign ports and lost friends.
They knew. He wasn’t different. He knew he was slipping under a spell, and that Downbelow was getting farther and farther away. He’d heard about meetings, in the chaff of conversation before undock. He’d heard about the captains getting together and talking about peace.
And now Union was escorting an Alliance ship?
He’d thought he understood the universe, or all of it he needed to know. And things weren’t what he thought.
“Clear to move,” the intercom said. “Twenty minutes to get your baggage and ten to take hold, cousins. Move, move, move.”
The front row filed out to the corridor and the next row was hot on their heels, everybody moving with dispatch when it was their turn.
Cargo spat out baggage at high speed and fair efficiency. He’d bought a silly cartoon trinket to hang from the tag, a distinction easier to spot, he’d learned, than the stenciled name; and Jeremy had urged him to buy it. Other people had colored cords, plastic planets, tassels… Jeremy’s was a metal enameled tag that said Mars, and a cartoon character of no higher taste than his. Jeremy’s duffle was already in the stack, but his wasn’t.
Jeremy carted his off. Fletcher saw his own come down the chute and grabbed it, double-checking the tag to be sure.
“Fletcher,” JR said, turning up beside him, and instinct had him braced for unpleasantness as he straightened and looked JR in the eyes.
“Good job,” JR said. “I can’t say all of it, even yet, but we’ve had a situation working at this port… same that put that ship out ahead of us, and it wasn’t a place to let our junior-juniors in on the matter, or to let them wander the dockside on their own. Toby and Wayne kind of kept an eye in your direction, you may have observed at first, but you didn’t need help, so they just pretty well left things to you and after that we got swept into running security for the captains’ business and didn’t check back, in the absence of distress signals. But we didn’t feel we had to. So we do appreciate it, and I’m speaking for all of us.”
He wasn’t used to well-dones. He didn’t have a repertoire of suitable polite remarks. His face went hot and he hoped it didn’t show.
“Thanks,” he said. If he was one of the Willetts or the Velasquezes he’d have learned how to shed compliments like water. But he wasn’t. And stood there holding a duffle with a plastic, large-eyed cartoon wolf for an identifying tag. The one JR had against his leg sported a classy Sol One enamelled tag, which he’d undoubtedly bought above Earth itself.
“We got out all right,” JR said, “and regarding what the captain was talking about to you before we made dock… and the reason we’re running with an escort right now… I’m warning you in advance we’re not going to get much of a liberty at Voyager. We can’t guarantee their cargo handling and we’re going to have to search every can. This is not going to be a fun operation. But we have to do it. We have to look as if we trust Voyager without actually trusting Voyager. Again, that’s for you to know. The junior-juniors aren’t to know the details.”
“And I am?” He couldn’t help it. He didn’t see himself in the line of confidences.
JR looked him straight in the face. “You need to know. You’re watching the potential hostages. And you need to know.”
“You don’t know me. Where do you think I’m so damn trustworthy?”
JR outright grinned. “Because you’d warn me like that.”
He’d never been outflanked like that. He shut his mouth. Had to be amused.
“Takehold in ten minutes,” the intercom advised them, and JR picked up his baggage.