And, frankly, Fletcher was late to be starting anything. At any given jump, the senior captain or third Helm or Scan or Com 1 might not wake up, and the senior-juniors would be moving up, into real posts. It could make bad, bad blood on that point if he couldn’t finesse what Fletcher was, or might be. But he’d made his initial determination, a junior personnel decision, and it was his decision.
“Behind my unit and ahead of Chad’s,” he said, “there’s no personnel from those years. No one survived. That’s the problem. There’s no one to assign you with, you’re too far behind my set, and you and Chad, who’d be somebody to put you with, have just pounded hell out of each other. That makes things somewhat hard for me trying to put you somewhere constructive.”
“How about back on Pell?” Fletcher asked, in hard, insubordinate challenge.
“Not my option. Not yours. I said you were in . I’ve got the job of finding you a spot. You want some senior privileges—” It was the damned drink incident at the bar that had touched off the mess, that and his failure to lay the law down absolutely on one side or the other. He was aware Chad was listening, and Chad would report exactly what the disposition was. So would he, faster than that. A memo would hit the individual mail-boxes within the hour. And this time he didn’t count on their lifelong connections to straighten out the details: he knew where he’d assumed it would happen with Fletcher. It hadn’t worked itself out; and decision, any decision, was better than no decision. “I’m creating a class of one. Solo. You want your unique privileges, you’ve got bar rights at family gatherings, but I’m insisting you stay in the approved junior-juniors’ sleepovers and not overnight elsewhere during liberty. More than that—I’m giving you a duty. You take care of Jeremy, Vince, and Linda. It takes them off my hands and gives me and my team a break from junior-juniors.”
Fletcher gave him a straight-on look, as if trying to decide where the stinger was.
“I don’t know the regulations.”
“They do. Jeremy won’t con you, Vince will almost assuredly try.” He made a shift of his eyes to Chad, who was getting off the table. And back to Fletcher. “You don’t have to make apologies to each other. A love fest isn’t required. I do expect civil behavior. And a concentrated effort to settle your differences.”
Fletcher absorbed that observation in long silence. He looked across the gap at Chad, on whom Charlie had interrupted his examination.
“Chad,” JR said, and Chad got down, jump suit bunched around his waist.
“Yessir.”
“Chad, this is your cousin Fletcher.”
“Yessir.” It was a mumble, still. Chad drew a deep breath and offered his hand.
Fletcher took it, not smiling.
“Pretty good punch,” Chad said magnanimously.
Fletcher didn’t say a thing. Just recovered his hand.
“Go on,” JR said, and Fletcher left.
“Damn station prig,” Chad said when he’d gone. “But he sure learnt to fight somewhere.”
“Evidently he did,” JR said dryly, and Chad got back on the table and endured being poked and prodded.
“Ow,” Chad said.
It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it tied things down. Charlie had put a finger on one significant matter. Tempers on what had been a burning issue almost always settled a little after jump: hyperspace straightened out perspectives, lowered emotional charges, made things seem trivial against the wider universe—acted, in most instances, like a mood elevator. Some quarrels just dissipated, grown too tenuous to maintain, and others fizzled after a few half-hearted spats the other side of where they’d been.
Unfortunately they weren’t approaching a jump where things would cool down. They were on the inbound leg of the Mariner run, coming into port, where he had to turn junior-junior crew loose on a dockside that had notoriously little sense of humor with rule-breakers—a dockside made doubly hazardous because it was a border zone between Alliance and Union and a minefield of political sensitivities and touchy cops.
Finity on a trade run as an ordinary merchanter was going to be damned conspicuous. He’d caught discussion among the senior crew, how various eyes were going to be watching her and her crew for signs that she wasn’t really engaged in commerce, signs, he could fill in for himself, such as the absence of underage crew on the docks, when all other ships let their youngsters go to the game parlors and the approved kid haunts.
They had to let the junior-juniors go out there. They had to look normal. And he had to get them back again, in one piece.
Put Fletcher in charge of the juniors who’d more or less been in charge of him ? It might straighten out the accidental kink that had developed in the order of things. He’d have Fletcher report to him once daily about the state of the juniors, he’d threaten Jeremy’s life if they gave Fletcher a hard time, and he’d have a daily phone call from Fletcher coincidentally confirming Fletcher’s own well-being and whereabouts, and necessitating the learning of rules and regulations—which would have galled Fletcher’s independent soul if he’d asked Fletcher to report on himself, or to read the rule book and learn it.
It was as good as he could manage. Better than he’d hoped.
He went to B deck and filed a report with the Old Man’s office, not a flattering one to himself. “I’ve put Fletcher in charge of the juniors,” he began it. And explained there’d been an incident. He’d hoped not to face the Old Man directly, but unfortunately the robot wasn’t taking calls.
Vince and Linda gave Fletcher a speculating look when he came back to the laundry. Jeremy stood and stared, his face grave and worried.
There wasn’t enough work to keep them busy. There was nothing but cards. Fletcher made a pass about the area looking for work to do, anything to keep him from answering junior questions. But in his concentrated silence even Vince didn’t blurt questions or smart-ass observations, maybe having learned he could get hurt.
“Not enough work to justify four of us,” Fletcher announced. “ You handle what comes in. I’m going to the room.”
“You better not,” Jeremy said in a hushed voice. “You’ll catch hell.”
“It’s my room,” he said. “I’ll go to it.”
But the intercom speaker on the wall came on with: “ Fletcher .”
Jeremy dived for it. “He’s here,” Jeremy volunteered, as if that was the source of all help.
“ Fletcher R., report to the senior captain’s office. ”
“Shit,” he said, and Jeremy instantly blocked the reply mike with his hand.
“He’s coming,” Jeremy said then. “He’ll be right there.”
“Going to catch hell,” Vince muttered.
Fletcher thought of going to his room anyway, and letting the captain come to him. But, he told himself, this was the person he wanted to see, the person who should have seen him when he boarded and who never yet had bothered. This was the Goda’mighty important James Robert who’d built the Alliance and fought off the pirate Fleet, who finally found time for him, and who might be annoyed to the point of making his life hell and fighting him on his hopes of leaving this ship if he didn’t report in.
“So where do I find him?” he asked Jeremy.
Vince, Linda and Jeremy answered, as if they were telling him the way to God.
“B7. There’s these offices. All the captains. His is there, too.”
Right near Legal. He knew his way. He walked out of the laundry station and down to the lift, rode it to B deck, trying not to let his temper get out of control, telling himself this was the man who could wreck him without trying.
Or finally understand the simple fact that he didn’t want to be here, and maybe… maybe just let him go.
The kids’ description matched reality, an office setup a lot like Legal, a front office where several senior crew worked at desks, all staff, offices to the side.