“So who are they?” Fletcher asked, not sure what security alert entailed, whether it was a trade rivalry or a question of guns and something far more serious.
“What we’ve got,” the cousin behind that cousin said—one was Linny and the other was Charlie T.—“what we’ve got is a rimrunner for the other side. But we’ve also got an escort. Union ship Boreale is going to go our route with us.”
A Union ship?
“Do we trust them?” Fletcher asked.
“Sometimes,” Charlie T. said. And about that time the airlock opened up and started letting them through, a fast bunch-up and a press to get on through and out of the bitter cold. They went through in a puff of fog that condensed around them. They’d put down a metal grid for traction as they entered the corridor, and it was frosted and puddled from previous entries.
Mini-weather, Fletcher thought, his head spinning with the possibilities of Union escorts, an emergency boarding. But the cousins around him remained cheerful, talking most about Mariner restaurants and what they’d found in the way of bargains in the shops. A cousin had a truly outlandish shirt on under the silvers. And it was a strong contrast to his last boarding in that he knew exactly where he was going, he knew they’d been posted to galley for their undock duty—laundry would have been entirely unfair to draw this soon—and he was actually looking toward his cabin, his bunk, his mattress and the comforts of his own belongings after the haste and nonstop party of dockside, which he’d thought would be hard to leave, when he’d gone out. He’d bought some books he was anxious to read, he’d bought games that promised hours of unraveling, and even a block of modeling medium—a long time since he’d had the chance to do any model-making; he’d used to be good at it.
He took the sharp turn into the undock-fitted rec hall, herded his three charges in to the rows of rails and standing cousins, but he had second thoughts about Jeremy.
“Are you all right?” he asked, delaying at the start of the row and holding up traffic. “You want to talk to Charlie, maybe get something for your stomach? Maybe go to the sit-down takehold?”
“No,” Jeremy said, and flashed a valiant grin. “I’m fine.”
“If he gets sick everybody’ll kill him,” Linda said helpfully as Jeremy went on into the row.
“Just if you don’t feel right, tell me.”
“No, I’m fine,” Jeremy said, and they all packed themselves into the eighth row among an arriving stream of cousins.
Everybody had called to confirm they were on their way, customs was expediting, and the ship was go when ready, that was the buzz floating in the assembly. It was the kind of thing Finity had used to do, or so the talk around him indicated; and at the rate the prelaunch area was filling up they were going to be clearing dock… the estimate was… maybe in twenty minutes.
Boreale , their Union escort, was on the same shortened schedule.
“What did this ship do?” Fletcher asked of Charles T. “Why are we suspicious?”
“It left dock early. Going our way.”
“Is it going to shoot at us, or what?”
“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.