He waited. Waited, with an eye on the clock.
Saw, utterly silent, the appearance of another dot on the system scheme, and the fan of probability in its initial plot, rapidly revising.
“ There she rides !” Com was unwontedly exuberant. “ Announcing the arrival of Union ship Boreale right over us and bound after Champlain for halt and question . Champlain is at a one-hour lag now, and projected as one and a half hours and proceeding. We do not believe that Champlain has made a second V-dump .”
He wouldn’t slow down to exchange pleasantries, JR said to himself, if he were in the position of Champlain’s captain, with an Alliance merchant-warrior and a Union warrior-merchant on his tail.
What the Old Man and Boreale could do to a suspected pirate spotter inside Mariner space was one thing. Outside that jurisdiction there was no law, and Champlain knew it was no accident they’d gone out on the same vector and tagged close behind her.
He had a bet on with himself, that almost all Champlain’s mass was fuel and that Champlain was going far across the local gravity well and away from them, before she dumped V and redirected for Voyager. They were doing a light skip in and out, light-laden themselves, in the notion of jumping first, transcending light while Champlain was still a moving dent in space-time, and possibly beating Champlain to Voyager. There was additional irony involved: that both they and Boreale could do it, and that neither they nor Boreale wanted to show to each other how handily they could do it in case their respective nations one day ended up in conflict. And that they didn’t entirely trust one another. There was just the remotest chance it might be politically useful to one party or another inside Union for one of the two principle ships defending the Alliance to disappear mysteriously and just not make port
Dangerous ally they’d taken. The Old Man had chosen that danger instead of the sure knowledge Champlain was no friend, and possibly did so precisely to demonstrate trust.
More compelling persuasion in the affairs of nations, JR thought now, the cessation of smuggling the Old Man proposed, the acceptance of Union negotiating demands: to have Alliance suddenly accept Union proposals threw such a new wrinkle into Union/Alliance affairs that Boreale wouldn’t dare turn on them without reporting that fact to Union headquarters. Unlike that carrier they’d passed (and he was sure it was no coincidence: the two ships were almost certainly working together), Boreale wasn’t a zonal command center, and couldn’t act without authority.
But even the carrier Amity , back at Tripoint, couldn’t set Union policy. A Union commander in deep space had to act with some autonomy, but conversely the restrictions policy laid on that autonomy were explicit. The Old Man had turned all Union certainties into uncertainty by complying with what Union had asked of them, and therefore it was likely the ship operating with them on this run was going to protect them until it could get word there and back again from Cyteen.
He’d grown up in the tangled shadows of the Old Man’s maneuvers, military and diplomatic, and he’d learned the principles of Union behavior: Uncertainty paralyzes: self-interest motivates. That, and: No local commander innovates policy.
Mallory innovated with a vengeance. It had made her highly unpopular with every nation, and annoyed the Alliance whose self-interest dictated they take the help of the only carrier and the only Fleet captain they or Earth could get. But even Pell didn’t entirely trust Mallory.
Let it be a lesson, the Old Man had used to say when he was a junior Jeremy’s age. Unpredictability has its virtues. But it has its negotiating drawbacks.
Union’s strategy hadn’t always worked. Mallory’s did more often than not. Mazian had been betrayed by his own masters: and Mallory had said in his hearing, Never serve Earth’s interests and succeed at anything. Nothing touched off Earth’s thousand-odd factions like the suspicion that some one faction’s policy might really succeed.
Pell was a Quen monarchy primarily because Pell had Earthlike tendencies, with one important difference. They chose an outsider to govern their outsider affairs because they couldn’t agree on one of their factional leaders holding power. Mariner was, again, a monarchy masquerading as a democracy: since the War, the same administrator had held power and set up an increasingly entrenched group, the only ones who knew how to govern. Voyager, tottering on the edge of ruin all during the War and fearing that peace might kill it… Voyager remained an enigma. While Esperance, a consortium of interests, as best he’d been able to figure its internal workings, clung to the Alliance only so long as it successfully played Alliance against Union.
What they carried, something the Old Man had to hope the Mariner stationmaster had not let leak in any detail to Boreale , was a firm proposal to shore up Voyager’s economy.
Voyager’s survival was not in Union’s short-term interest. If Voyager went bankrupt, Esperance would have no choice but to swing into Cyteen’s political and economic Union, a situation which the consortium on Esperance itself surely couldn’t want to happen, though individual members of that consortium might have other notions. In helping them carry out their mission, however, Boreale not only abetted the effort to close the black market, which was in Union’s interest, but aided Voyager’s economy, which wasn’t altogether in Union’s economic interest but was in interest of the peace, which was in Union’s long-term interest.
Higher policy. Boreale’s captain, even if he knew both halves of the equation, was going to be damned by his high command if he failed to render aid to Finity if the question went one way and damned if he did render it, if the question went the other, but as Union generally operated, that captain’s career salvation was going to be the simple fact Boreale had acted to uphold current policy.
So Boreale wouldn’t blow them to hell out here away from witnesses, and would concentrate instead on its proper target, a merchanter on the wrong side of Union policy and Alliance law.
The Old Man bet their lives on it, but it was a good bet and a better bet than being out here alone in the case that Champlain might have dumped down hard and Finity would have exited jump into a barrage of fire. Might have won, all the same, but this way there wasn’t a shot fired. The Old Man’s bet was won.
“ Crew has one hour ,” the intercom said. “ One hour to prepare for run up to jump. We are not spending time here. Cargo is stable. Ship is stable. Rise and shine, cousins, and get yourselves set. Our colleague is now in front of us and we’re on the track. Note: the captain regrets there will be no bar open at Mariner-Voyager Point .”