He was, before they took out the station casualties, a kind of hero—at least to the few men next to him, who had gotten him confused with the captains of ships like Dublin and Finity’s End and, he had heard, even the Union ship Liberty, who had done the liberating of their station. Mostly Norway. Mostly the tough, seasoned troops of the Alliance carrier had invaded the halls and routed out what pockets of Mazianni remained holding stationer hostages. The same troops had found him holding Curran, trying to keep him from bleeding to death, which was how he had spent the battle for Venture Station, crouched down in a small spot and confused about who was fighting whom. The gratitude embarrassed him, but it was better than admitting what he really was, and fighting a silent war across the space between cots, so he took it with appropriate modesty.
It was someone to talk to, until they moved the stationers out.
“When do I get out?” he asked, hoping that he was going to.
“Tomorrow,” the medic promised him, whether or not that came from official sources.
He was not in the habit of believing official promises, and he was trying to sleep the next morning after breakfast when the medic came to ask him if he could walk out or if he had to have a litter.
“Walk,” he decided.
“Got friends waiting for you.”
“Crew?”
“So I understand.”
He took the packet the medic tossed down, his own shaving kit. A change of clothes. So they had come. He was heartened in spite of himself, reckoned that somehow it had turned up convenient in Dublin’s books.
It got him out of Norway. That much. He shaved with the medic’s help—no easy trick with one arm immobilized. Got dressed .—”Here,” the medic said, stuffing a paper into his pocket. “That’s the course of treatment. You follow it. Hear me?”
He nodded, only half interested. A trooper showed up on call to take him out. “Thanks,” he told the medic, who accepted that with a dour attention; and he left with the trooper. “Got to walk slow,” he told the woman, who adjusted her pace to suit.
It was not a far walk—not as far as it might have been on something Norway’s size. He came down the lift and out the lock, taking it as slowly as reasonable, only half light-headed.
And they were there, Allison, Deirdre, Neill; and Curran, at the foot of the ramp. He went down and met offered hands, took Curran’s. “You all right?” he asked Curran.
“Right enough,” Curran said, embraced him carefully with a hand on his sound shoulder. Looked at him with that kind of gratitude the stationer had had, which he took in the same understanding.
“Allison,” he said then, and took her hand—a forlorn pain went through him, a flicker of the dark eyes. “Well, you did it right, Reilly, top to bottom. Must have.”
“I should have come after you,” she said. “I didn’t know you were on the dock.”
Then how could you? No way. It worked, didn’t it?”
“Got us all in one piece.”
“I’m usually right.” He touched Deirdre’s arm and took Neill’s hand, looked back at Allison and saw a trooper beckon.
“Captain’s waiting,” the trooper said, waved a hand toward the dockside offices.
“Mallory,” Allison said.
He nodded. His heart had turned over. He started that way—at least it was not far across the dock; the same office, the place of recent memory. He felt numb in the cold, and no little disoriented.
“Dublin’s in on the conference,” Allison said. The Old Man; our legal counsel—you’ve got that behind you.”
“Good to know,” he said.
“You don’t believe it.”
“Of course I believe it. You say so.”
She gave him one of those looks as they went into the office, into a gathering thick with military in blue and merchanters in silver and white.
Repeat scene: only it was Mallory behind the desk, and Talley close by her… one of the breed exchanged for another.
“Captain,” she said, a courteous nod.
He paid her one in return. He looked further about him, noted the patches: Dublin’s shamrock on the silver, and on the white, the arrogant black sphere of Finity’s End, a Name so old they had no insignia at alclass="underline" and rejuv-silvered hair other than Mallory’s, a gathering of senior officers in which one Sandor Kreja would have been a small interest—give or take a bogus cargo and half a million credits.
“Wanted to straighten a matter out with you,” she said, “—Need a chair, Captain?”
“No.” An automatic no, half-regretted; but no one else was seated but Mallory… he refused to be the center of things along with her; but he was: he reckoned that.
“Any time you change your mind,” she said, “feel free. It’s really not fair to call you in like this, but Norway’s prone to sudden departures. And I’m sure others don’t want to log too much dock time.—Are you sure about the chair, Captain?”
He nodded. A small trickle of sweat started down the side of his face. Small talk was not Mallory’s style. He disliked it, them, this whole gathering.
“You played it straight,” she said. “I rather hoped you might, Captain. But I was a little surprised by it”
“You were a little late.” He recovered his sense of balance, pulse rate getting up again. “You took our arrival rate. You cut it pretty long on our side.”
She shrugged, passing off the wounds, the deaths onstation. “You bettered your rate by a few hours… didn’t you?”
He thought back then, through the fog of realtime—the haste they had used through the second jump, Allison in command and mutiny on the bridge. The anger went out of him. “Maybe we did,” he said.
“We were on time, absolutely.—But you managed well enough. —Tell me… did you tell them where to find me?”
“I reckoned you meant me to. You don’t set much store by heroes, do you?”
Mallory laughed. It surprised him, that quick, cold humor. “Land on your feet, do you? No, I didn’t expect it.”
“So I spilled all I knew and invented some. But I’ll trust you’re going to stand by our agreement.”
“On what, Captain?”
“Hazard rate. On military cargo.”
She thought a moment, wondering, he thought.
“I didn’t breach the seals,” he said, “but they did. And they knew I was a plant. That wasn’t comfortable.”
“No, I daresay not.” She turned over some papers on her desk. “Vouchers for the pay you’re due. No dock charge at Venture, under the circumstances. Let’s treat it as lifesupport freight.”
Mallory had, he thought, a certain sense of humor. He was going to get out of this. He was insanely tempted to like Mallory, in sheer gratitude. “Captain,” he said. Thanks stuck in his throat.
“That’s an interesting rig, your ship.” She failed to let go of the papers and he let go of them in a sudden chill, cursing his momentary trust. “Everything under lock—papers of clouded origin-backing from one of Union’s major Names. You know there was a time, Captain, I wondered about Dublin itself… keeping your company.”
“We don’t take that,” a Dublin officer said.
“Oh, I’m assured otherwise. Our allies from across the Line vouch for you. But you have odd associates.—Tell me, Captain Reilly—what motive to lend to a marginer… on that scale?”
“Private business.”
“I don’t doubt” She offered the papers a second time. Sandor took them, his fingers gone cold. He wanted to sit down. The room proved hot/cold and confused with sound. “Your papers, Captain—are altered. Do you know that?”
He blinked… felt the edge of the desk with his fingertips, tried to summon up his wits. That’s not so.”
“And you run gold under the plates.”
“Private store. My own property. I expect it to be there when I board.”
Mallory considered him slowly. “Of course it is.”
“If you ran that thorough a search on Pell—”