He was frowning at her, trying to come up with an answer, when her wrist-comm beeped. She actually jumped with shock. “That’s the signal I’ve been waiting for,” she said, a trifle breathless as her nerves twitched. “There’s a freighter in dock, from Jefferson. We came down to meet it. To meet the crew, I mean. They’ve been unloading cargo for a couple of hours. As soon as they’ve finished, they’ll hit the bars and restaurants for a night of shore leave. We have an advance spotter in place at the terminal, to let us know when the crew disembarks. That signal was the heads up that they’re about to leave.”
“How many of you are out here, tonight?”
“Twenty-three. We’ve staked out the closest port-side bars and gambling joints, the likeliest restaurants. Freighter crews usually don’t travel far, the first night of a shore leave. And this freighter has a big crew, according to the portmaster’s records.”
“The portmaster? Don’t tell me you kids are hacking into secure databases?”
“We are not kids,” Yalena bit out.
He reached across again, brushed her cheek with a gentle fingertip. “Oh, yes, little cousin, you most assuredly are. A girl your age shouldn’t have that kind of shadows in her eyes. They’ll pay for that. Trust me, for that much, at least. They will pay. And I’m not the only Jeffersonian combat veteran who came home on that tramp freighter. There’s a whole group of us. We’ve ridden military convoys and freighters halfway across the Sector, trying to get here.”
That startled her. She hadn’t considered such a possibility. “How many of you came in?”
He dropped his fingertips from her face. “Thirty-four, on my freighter. And not one of us,” he added with a growl, “could persuade the Jeffersonian embassy to honor our travel visas.”
“Are you armed? she asked softly.
He studied her for a moment. “Yes,” he said at length. “Not with Concordiat military issue, mind. But traveling armed has become something of a habit, with us.”
“What branch of the service did you join?”
“Infantry.” The harsh tone grated along her nerves.
“That must have been… nightmarish.” She was thinking of the Bolo.
“Worse.” The shadows in his eyes spread, driving furrows through his face. His fingers tightened on the empty beer mug. “We were a mixed lot, on the freighter,” he added, voice abrupt. “Infantry, Marines, Air-Mobile Cav, Navy. There’s another ship coming in a couple of days from now, with more of us. The ship I came on didn’t have enough berths for everyone. When the second freighter comes in, there’ll be another sixty.”
“That’s nearly a hundred combat veterans,” Yalena mused, entertaining brief fantasies of a strike force blowing down Vittori Santorini’s palatial gates and turning him into red paste on his front lawn. “When do they arrive?”
He smiled. “Our luck was in, when we started hunting for another freighter. The Star of Mali dropped out of hyper-light a couple of hours before my group boarded the Merovitch. The Star was listed in the portmaster’s schedules as the next ship due to make the Vishnu run. As it happens, my brother Stefano’s crew aboard the Star. So I called him while they were transiting the system and asked how many of us they could bring. His captain agreed to bring them all. They ought to be here in a couple of days.”
Yalena blinked. “The Star? Good God. Captain Aditi smuggled me out of Jefferson aboard the Star.”
Estevao’s eyebrows stole a march toward his hairline. “Really? Then you’ve met Stefano?”
She nodded. Then lowered her gaze to the droplets still clinging to the sides of her empty wine glass. “Yes. I’m afraid I don’t remember much about that trip. I was in a pretty deep state of shock.”
“I can well imagine. All right,” he mused, toying with his empty beer mug, “tell me about your group. How many people do you have?
“Seventy, all together. Students, I mean. I’m counting the ones determined to go back and do something. There are a lot more Granger students who are too scared to try.”
“I think,” her cousin said, meeting her gaze, “it’s high time I met your father again.” When she bit her lip, he added, “I presume you have more, ah, suitable clothes stashed somewhere around here?”
She grinned. “There’s a locker room in back, behind the kitchen.”
“When’s your shift over?”
“A couple of hours. It’s a school night. I was very careful,” she added with a wry smile, “not to sign up for early morning classes.”
“Wise tactic,” he nodded in approval.
“I am enrolled in C.O.R.P.—” she began. Her wrist-comm beeped, slicing through her intended comment with an emergency code that meant trouble. In the same instant, she heard sirens wailing in the street outside the bar.
“Oh, hell,” she swore viciously. “Something’s gone wrong…”
Jiri burst into the bar, shouting for her. “Yalena! Trouble at the gate!”
“I’m coming! I’ve got to get my clothes—”
“No time!” He was striding across a bar full of surprised patrons. “Just kick those damned shoes off and run.”
She was peeling off the spike heels.
Estevao Soteris was already on his feet, looking dangerous and competent. Jiri glared at him, ready to argue with what he thought was a disgruntled patron.
“He’s my mother’s cousin,” Yalena said hastily, “just into port. He’s an Infantry veteran.” She finally had the shoes off. Yalena dropped them on the table and came out of the booth like a gunshot. They ran for the door. “Sorry, Jack,” she shouted to the manager on the way past.
“I’ll dock your wages, dammit!”
“Suit yourself!” She hurled herself through the door and out onto the street. The gantries and loading docks were a blaze of lights, jeweled towers rising skyward in the darkness, far above the roofs of port-side warehouses, passenger terminals, shopping arcades, and “water trade” establishments that provided space-weary crews everything from liquid amnesia to horizontal recreation. The freighters, themselves, never touched atmosphere, remaining instead in parking orbit, mated to one of Vishnu’s five major space stations. But the cargo shuttles were immense ships in their own right, with heavy-thrust engines capable of lifting the shuttles and several tons of cargo from port to orbit.
The pavement was cold under Yalena’s bare feet. Her cousin growled, “Put these back on. You’ll cut your feet to shreds, out here.”
He was holding her shoes, which no longer boasted spike heels. He’d cut them off — or maybe just snapped them with battle-hardened hands. She thrust her feet back into them and took off. The mutilated heels clacked against the concrete walkway. At least her dress was short enough not to hamper her stride. They ran toward the terminal. Police cars streaked past, sirens and horns shrieking a warning to pedestrians and ground cars. An air-lift ambulance shot past at window-top level, rattling wires and street signs with its passage.
Yalena ran neck and neck with Jiri, while Estevao brought up rear guard. They had just reached the terminal when the trouble spilled out onto the street. It was a fight. A big one. Yalena actually recognized some of the faces in the embattled crowd. They were students. POPPA students. She understood in a flash what had happened. POPPA students had always been arrogant and vicious in their effort to keep Grangers in their place. The newest POPPA arrivals, who’d just come in for the start of the school year, sported worse attitudes than most. She’d heard talk on campus about POPPA students’ plans to meet freighters coming in from Jefferson, to be sure any “illegal, uppity stowaways” learned from the outset that they were still fourth-class citizens and had better toe POPPA’s line if they didn’t want relatives back home to suffer.