“Better set up the next jump in case,” Allison said. “I don’t trust this.”
“Outrun that?” Sandor focused on the question through the trank haze. “You’re dreaming, Reilly.” They kicked off velocity again, a numbing pulse that scrambled wits a moment He blinked and reached an unsteady hand toward comp, started lining the tracking up again.
“We’re in,” Allison said. “That’s got us on velocity.”
“Getting nothing more than ID transmission,” Neill said.
“Got a solid image,” Curran said. “They’re close. That’s confirmed, out there, range two minutes.”
The image hit his screen, transferred unasked. “Should I contact them?” Neill asked. “I’m getting no com output”
“No.” He blinked, the sweat running on his face, concentrated on the business in front of him—and that ship out there, right on them as a warship reckoned speed, silent, sullen—was Mazianni in all but name. He got a lock on the reference star, saw the figures come up congruent, fed them in and sent the information over to Allison’s console.
“Got it clear,” Allison said. “Still want me to take it, or do you want to hold it?”
He caught his breath, sent a desperate look over all the board in front of him. Vid showed them nothing but stars; other sensors showed the G well itself, the mass, the heat of an almost-star that was the nullpoint. And the pockmark that was Norway. A situation. A raw Dubliner recruit asking for the board, maybe not particularly anxious to have control at the moment. He shunted things over to the number two board. “She’s yours.” His voice was hoarse. He pretended nonchalance, let go the restraints, reached for the water bottle and drank. “Here.”
Allison looked aside, a distracted flick of her eyes, took the bottle and drank a gulp, passed it back. He slipped it back into the brace and hauled his way out of the cushion.
Looked back again, toward the screens, with a tightness about his throat.
Norway. And Mallory was saying nothing. The presence did not surprise him. Somehow the foreboding silence did not either.
“Mainday shift,” he said, “let alterday have it.”
“Sir,” Neill muttered, the first courtesy of that kind he had gotten out of them. Natural as breathing from a Dubliner on a bridge. Spit and polish, and he finally got it out of them. Neill stirred out of his place.
“Got another one,” Deirdre said suddenly. “Got another ship out there.”
Sandor crossed the deck to his chair in a stride and a half, flung himself into it.
“ID as Alliance ridership Thor” Deirdre said. “Coming out of occultation with the mass.”
“One of Mallory’s riders,” Allison muttered.
“If they’ve got the riders deployed—” Neill said, back at his own post.
No one made any further surmises.
“Second signal,” Deirdre said. ‘The ID is ridership Odin.”
“Deployed before we dropped in here,” Sandor said.
“What do you know about it?” Curran asked.
“Sir,” Sandor said.
Curran turned his head. “From back at Pell, sir—did you expect this? What was it Mallory said?”
“That she’s watching the nullpoint. I’m not at all surprised she’s here. Or that she’s not talking. What would you expect? A good morning?”
“Lord help us,” Allison muttered. “And what kind of cargo have they handed us, that we get Mallory for a nursemaid?”
“I don’t ask questions.”
“Maybe we should have,” Curran said. “Maybe we should get ourselves a couple of those canisters open.”
“I’m reckoning you’d find chemicals and station goods,” Sandor said. “I’d even bet it’s Konstantin Company cargo, the same as we would have gotten. I don’t think that’s what Mallory’s interested in at all. I think we’re being prodded at.”
“Because they’re still breathing down your neck: that’s what we’ve inherited—your own record with them. It’s some kind of trap, something we’ve walked into—”
“You applied for Venture routing, Mr. Reilly. Dublin handed a marginer a half a million, stifled an inquiry, and headed us for Pell’s most sensitive underside. A Unionsider. Put it together. Union and Alliance may be at peace, but Mallory’s got old habits. Maybe you’d better think like a marginer, after all. Maybe you’d better start figuring angles, because they have them in offices, the same as dockside. And the powers that be on Unionside had them, when they got cooperative and wanted Dublin this side of the Line. But maybe you’d know that. Or maybe you should have sat down and figured it”
“If you’ve got it figured, then say it. Let the rest of us in on it”
“Not me. I don’t know. But we’re not making any noise we don’t have to. We tiptoe through this point and get that cargo to-”
“Moving,” Deirdre said. “Thor’s moving on intercept”
Sandor dived for the board, a sweat broken out on his sides, sickly cold on his face. He stopped his hand short of the controls, clenched it there in the reckoning that there was nothing they could do… No arms the equal of that; no ability to run, loaded as they were.
(Ross?… Ross… What’s to do?)
“Contact them?” Allison asked.
“No.”
“Stevens… Sandor… what precious else can we do?”
“We keep going on our own business. We let them escort us through the point if that’s what they have in mind. But we don’t open up to them. Let the contact be theirs.”
She said nothing. Helm was still under her control. The ship kept her course as she was, no variances.
“Message incoming,” Neill said: “They say: Escort to outgoing range. They say: request exact time and range our departure from Pell.”
“They’re tracking us,” Curran muttered.
“They repeat. They want acknowledgment.”
“Acknowledge it,” Sandor said. “Tell them we’re figuring.” He sat down at comp, keyed through and downed the sound, started calling up the information.
“Sir,” Neill said. “Sir, I think you’d better talk to them. They’re insisting.”
He snatched up the audio plug and thrust that into his ear, adjusted the mike wand from the plug one-handed. “Feed it through.”
“… accurate,” he caught. “Lives ride… on absolute accuracy, Lucy. Do you copy that?”
“Say again.—Neill, what’s he talking about, lives?”
“To whom am I speaking?” the voice from the ridership asked. “To Stevens?”
“This is Stevens, trying to do your calculations if you’ll blasted well give me time.”
“Your ship will proceed to Voyager as scheduled. You’ll dock and discharge Voyager cargo. You have three days for station call, to the hour. And you’ll return to this jump point on that precise schedule.”
“Request information.”
“No information. We’re waiting for that departure data.”
“Precise time locaclass="underline" 2/02:0600 mainday; locator 8868:0057: 0076.35, tracking on recommended referents, Pell chart 05700.”
“2/02:0600 precise?”
“You want our mass reckoning?” He was scared. It was a track they were running, no question about it He flung out the question to let them know he knew.
“You carrying anything except our cargo, Lucy?”
“Nothing.” The air from the vent touched sweat on his face. “Look, I’ll run that reckoning on my own comp and give you our RET.”
“Is 0600 accurate?”
“0600:34.”
“We copy 0600:34. Your reckoning is not needed, Lucy.”
“Look, if you want data—”
“No further questions, Lucy. We find that agreeing with our estimate. Congratulations. Endit.”
“We’re in trouble,” Allison said.
“They’re accounting for our moves,” he said. “Just figuring. I’d reckon Pell buoy scheduled us pretty well the way they set it up.” He shut down comp, back under lock. “So they know now what our ETA is with the mass we’re hauling: every move we make from now on—”