But outside port—even if some miracle got him clear of Pell—
A flash across his vision, of armored troops on Lucy’s bridge, of fire coming back at them, and the Old Man dying; and his mother; and the others—of being hit, and Ross falling on him—
And Jal screaming for help, when the troopers dragged him back through that boarding access and onto their ship; Jal and the others they had taken aboard, for whatever purposes they had in mind…
The Alliance played politics with Union; and maybe they wanted, at the moment, to manufacture a pirate threat to Pell interests, to justify the existence of armed Alliance ships. And if they hauled him in—the mindwipe could make sure he told the story they wanted. A paranoid fancy. Not likely. But he was among strangers, and too many things were possible… where pirates hunted pirates and might want to throw out a little deceiving chaff.
A step approached him on his left. He looked about and a hand closed on his arm and he looked straight into the face of Allison Reilly. ‘Told you to stay inside,” she said.
“So I’m here.” The shock still had his pulse thumping. “Find out anything?”
She pulled papers from her pocket, waved them in front of him. “Everything. It’s covered. I’ve got you off clear.”
He shook his head. The words went through without touching. “Clear.”
“Dublin got Dancer to withdraw the allegations. We’ve got a show-cause order for station and they’re not going to be able to come up with anything to substantiate it. We just filed the papers. And this—” She thrust one of the papers at him. “That’s an application for your Alliance registry and trade license. And Dublin’s standing witness. That’ll get you clear paper for this side of the Line. That’s to be signed and filed, but it’s all in order: our lawyer set it up.” A second paper. That’s a show-cause for customs, to get that seal off. They can’t maintain that without the charge from Dancer. This—” A third paper. “A loan, enough for dock charges, refitting, and cargo. I’ve got you crew. I’ve got you all but cleared to pull out of here. A way to outfit with what you need. Are you following me?”
He blinked and tried. Stopped believing it and looked for the strings: it was the only thing to do when things looked too good. “What’s it cost?” he asked. ‘Where’s the rest of it? There is a rest of it.”
She nodded toward the bar next door. “Come on. Sit down and look through it.”
He went, dragged by the hand, into the noise and closeness of the smallish bar, sat down with her at a table by the door where there was enough light to read, and spread out the papers. “Beer,” she ordered when the waiter showed, and in the meantime he picked up the loan papers and tried to make sense of them. Clause after clause of fine print Five hundred thousand credit cargo allowance. A hundred thousand margin account. He looked at numbers stacked up like stellar distances and shook his head.
“You’re not going to get a better offer,” she said. “I’ll tell you how you got it. I’m going with you. The whole Third Helm alterday watch of Dublin is signing with you for this tour. Crew that knows what they’re doing. I’ll vouch for that. My watch. And it’s a fair agreement. You say that your Lucy can make profit on marginer cargoes. What do you think she could do given real backing?”
That touched on his pride, deeply. He lifted his head, not stupid in it, either. “I don’t know. My kind of operation I know— how to get what’s going rate on small deals. Lucy’s near two hundred years old. She’s not fast. I strung those jumps getting here. Hauling, she’s slow, and you come out of those jumps feeling it.”
“I’ve seen her exterior on vid. What’s the inside rig?”
He shrugged. “Not what you’re used to. Number one hold’s temperature constant to 12 degrees, the rest deep cold; fifteen K net—It’s not going to work. I can’t handle that kind of operation you’re talking about”
“It’ll work.”
“I don’t know why you’re doing this.”
“Business. Dublin’s starting up operations here, wants a foot on either side of the Line; putting you on margin account is convenient And if it helps you out at the same time—”
The beers came. Sandor picked his up and drank to ease his dry mouth, gave the papers another desperate going over, trying to find the clause that talked about confiscations, about liability that might set him up for actions, about his standing good for previous debts.
“A few profitable runs,” she said, “and you build up an account here and you clear the debt. You want to know what Dublin clears on a good run?”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“It’s a minor loan. Put it that way. That’s the scale we’re talking about It’s nothing. And there’s a ten-year time limit on that loan. Ten years. Station banks—would they give you that? Or any combine? You work that debt down and there’s a good chance you could deal with Dublin for a stake to a refitting. I mean a real refitting. No piggyback job. Kick that ancient unit off her tail and put a whole new generation rig on. She’s a good design, stable moving in jump; some of the newest intermediate ships on the boards borrow a bit from her type.”
“No,” he said in a small voice. “No, you don’t get me into that. You don’t get your hands on her.”
“You think you can’t do it You think you’ll fail.”
He thought about it a moment
“What better offer,” she asked him, “have you ever hoped to have? And if charges come in, who’s going to stand with you? Hmn? You sign the appropriate papers, you take the offer.—I’ve gone out on a line for you; and for me, I admit that. I get a post I can’t get on my ship. So we both take a risk. I don’t know but what there’s worse to you than you’ve told. I don’t know who your enemies might be; and I wouldn’t be surprised if you had some.”
He shook his head slowly. “No, I don’t. Hard as it may be to believe, I’ve never made any I know of.”
“Smart, at least”
“Survival.—Reilly: if I sign those papers, I’m telling you— there’s one captain on Lucy, and I’m it.”
‘There’s nothing in those papers that says anything to the contrary.”
He drank a long mouthful of the beer. “We get a witness on this?”
That’s the deal. Station offices.”
He nodded slowly. “Let’s go do it, then.”
It made him less than comfortable, to go again into station offices, to confront the dockmaster’s agents and turn in the applications that challenged station to do its worst. The documents went from counter to desk behind the counter, and finally to one of the officials in the offices beyond—a call finally into that office, where they stood while a man looked at the papers.
“How long—” Sandor made himself ask, against all instincts to the contrary. “How long to process those and get the seal clear? I’d like to start hunting cargo.”
An official frown. “No way of knowing.”
“Well,” Allison said, “there’s already a routing application in.”
A lift of the brows, and a frown after. None too happy, this official. “Customs office,” he said, punching in on the com console. “I have Lucy’s Stevens in with forms.”
And after the answer, another shunting to an interior office, more questions and more forms.
Nature of cargo, they asked. Information pending acquisition, Sandor answered, in his own element. He filled the rest out, looped some blanks, letting station departments chase each other through the maze. Clear was a condition of mind, a zone in which he had not yet learned to function.
Legitimate, he kept telling himself. These were real papers he was applying for. Honest papers. In the wrong name, and under a false ID, and that was the stain on matters: but real papers all the same.