She kept running through the listings, finance, and plumbing and navigation. Customs, one said; and Law; and Banks; and Exchange; and In Case, one said. She pushed that one.
“Sandy” the voice said gently, “if you’re into this one, the worst has happened, I guess; and of course I don’t know where or who—but I love you. Sandy—I’ll say that first. And there are several things you can do. I’ll lay them out for you—”
She stopped it with a push of the key, collapsed into the cushion under the weight of the pack, under the weight of shock. Sandy. Sandor. It was indisputable title—to Lucy and what it held.
That was somebody,” Deirdre said. “Lord, Allie—what kind of rig is this?”
She started shedding her pack, struggling out of her suit. “I don’t know. But it’s his. Sandor’s. And whoever it was thought things through.”
“They’ve got him and Curran,” Neill said, “If we knew where—”
“Wrong odds,” she said. She freed her upper body, stood up and shed the rest of it. Panting, she settled back again and looked up at them. At both of them. “I’ll tell you how it is. We hold onto the ship; and if they try to take it we get ourselves some of them. That’s it.”
They nodded, helmetless both. She loved them, she thought suddenly. Everything had come apart. She had just killed someone… had gotten herself and her crewmates into a situation without exit, a dead end in all senses. Sandor and Curran gone—taken off the ship—lost… Everything had gone foul, everything from the moment she had planned to have her way in the world, and her two cousins stood there, able to have added it all up, and gave her a simple consent. The way Curran had done. And Sandor, for whatever tangled reasons.
Her throat swelled, making it painful to swallow. Her mind started working. “I’m betting they’re still alive,” she said, “Curran and Sandor—or the Mazianni would have gone at the ship with a cutter. They still reckon to get the ship intact.”
She reached and punched in on com, scanning through it, trying to pick up Mazianni transmissions, but there was nothing readable. Only the station pulse continued… False indication of life. She turned on vid as it bore—and it produced a desolate image of a primitive torus, vacant except for the vast bulk of a carrier berthed near them, and another object that might be yet another freighter docked farther on, indistinct in the dark and the curve of the station.
“Got ourselves a target if we wanted to take it,” Neill said. “Even a creature that size—has a sensitive spot about the docking probe.”
“Might,” she agreed. “Wonder what the guns are worth,” She went for the comp listing, called it up. The voice began, talking in simple terms, advising against starting anything.
“Shut up,” she told it softly.
It kept on, relentless, and got then to what the guns were worth, which was not much.
But there was that chance, she reckoned; and then she got to reckoning what the bristles were on the frame of the monster next to them… and what that broadside would leave of them and a good section of Venture Station.
“Don’t try to fight” the young-man’s-voice of the computer pleaded with them. “Use your head. Don’t get into situations without choices”
It was late advice.
Chapter XVII
“I told you,” Sandor said, “I’ve got no inclination to heroics. You want to deal, I’ll deal.”
It was a tight gathering, that in the cold dockside office—a dozen Mazianni, mostly officers, in a dingy, aged facility, heated by a portable unit, with some of the lights burned out—a desk cluttered with printouts. And burn-scars on the walls, that spoke of violence here at some point. There was no sign of the former occupants, nothing. He stood across the desk from Edger himself, and Curran was somewhere behind him, back among the guns that kept the odds in this meeting to Edger’s liking.
“What have you got to deal with?” Edger asked him.
“Look, I don’t want any trouble. You keep your hands off my ship and off my crewman.”
“Might have need of personnel,” Edger said.
“No. No deal at all on that. Look, you want cargoes—I’m not particular. You feed me goods and I’ll shift them where you like. You want some of your own people to go along, fine.” There was a chair a trooper had his foot in. Sandor gestured at it, looking at Edger. ‘‘You mind? Captain to captain, as it were—” Edger made a careless, not quite amused gesture and he captured the chair from the trooper, dragged it over and sat down, leaned on the desk and jabbed a finger onto it amid the papers. “Do I figure right, you’ve got your sights on Pell? Maybe Mallory’s playing your game out there; maybe you’re going to pull it off.”
“Mallory.”
He sat back a fraction, playing it with a scant flicker; but the hate in Edgar’s eyes was mortal—So, he thought, having tried that perimeter. Play it without principles. All the way. “Her cargo aboard,” he said. “She hauled me in before undock, said she was watching. And she’s out there. Overjumped us. Just watching. That’s what I know. I’m not particular. You want Mallory’s cargo, welcome to it And if you want trade done somewhere across the Line, I’m willing—but not Pell. Not and answer questions back there.”
Edger was a mass murderer. So was Mallory. But there was a febrile fixation to Edger’s stare that tightened the hairs on his nape. No dockside justice ever promised Edger’s kind of dealing.
“Suppose we discuss it with your man back there,” Edger said.
“Discuss what?”
“Mallory.”
“I’ll discuss Mallory. I’ve got no percentage in it”
“Where is Norway?”
“Last time I saw her she was off by James’s Point”
“Doing what?”
“Waiting for something. She’s working with Union. That’s the rumor. They’ve got all the nullpoints sewed up and Union’s working with her. So they say.”
Edger was silent a moment. Shifted his eyes to his lieutenant and back again. “What cargo?”
“I don’t know what cargo. I didn’t want Mallory on my neck. I didn’t break any seals.”
“Junk, Captain Stevens. Junk. We looked. Recycling goods.” Edger’s voice rose and fell again; and Sander’s mind went to one momentary blank.
“She set me up,” he exclaimed. “That bastard bitch set me up. She knew what was here and sent me into it.”
No reaction from Edger: nothing. The eyes stayed fixed on him, feverish and still, and the noise of his protest fell into that silence and died.
“Look, I don’t know anything. I swear to you, I’m a marginer with legal troubles; and Mallory offered me hazard rate for a haul —offered me a way out, and a profit, and she set me up. She bloody well set me up.”
“I’m touched, Stevens.”
“It’s the truth.”
“It’s a setup, Stevens, you’re right in that much.—Hagler, take a detail and persuade Stevens he’s hired; get that ship working.”
“Hired for what?”
“Don’t press your luck, Stevens. You may survive this voyage… if you learn.”
A hand descended on his shoulder. He got up, without protest, calculating wildly—to get back aboard again, get sealed in there with a crew and take care of them… Allison and her cousins would be there; and there was suddenly a way out—
Everyone was moving, the gathering adjourning elsewhere with some dispatch. They were pulling out, he reckoned suddenly. They could not afford to sit at rest if they suspected Mallory was on the loose. A warship out of jump, not dumping its velocity—he did the calculations mentally, fogged in the terror of them, let himself be taken by the arm and steered for the door, a gun prodding him in the back. A ship like Norway could be down their throats scant minutes behind its lightspeed bow wave of ID and interference… could blow them out of this fragile, antique shell of a station.