They went inertial then, a moment of float, and he snatched the restraints across and jammed the first and the second clip shut with shaking hands.
After that he lay flat on his back and felt the stomach-jolting g-shifts of maneuver of a ship that didn't care about crew comfort, and didn't engage the ring for crew safety, or warn anyone beyond sounding the siren.
In a hurry to leave and doing a show-off bit of maneuvering, he could read it—screw you all, the pilot was saying to Sprite, and to Viking, and maybe to all civilized places, maybe just because Austin Bowe was pissed, who knew?
Chapter Four
—i—
"MARIE."
Depend on it. Saja found her. Turned up at her elbow in the Trade Bureau offices, all concern, all indignation.
Marie keyed up another file in the Financial Access section, downloaded it… they said a ship at Viking Free Port had open access to the trade records. Translation: they let you look. If you understood the software and knew what files might be significant, good luck, you had a chance, but the too-damned-helpful system wanted to pre-digest the reports for you if you got into the market area, not give you access to the raw data, and thatwas a piece of computer cheek.
So Corinthianhad pulled out. Spooked out, left, maybe to change its whole pattern, her worst fear, and she was not in a mood to be lectured to by Family.
Maybe, with luck, and substantial evidence, she could get the cops into Miller's warehouse.
"Marie."
"I'm not deaf." The station files were in database and wouldn't be accessed from Sprite's ops boards, the Rules were against it. Unfortunately so was the barrier system. So one trekked in and asked questions, and even load-splicing couldn't fit the total DB onto any data storage medium that the casual questioner might carry into the Trade Bureau.
"Mischa's been worried."
"I don't know why." Another splice. Another capture. Hours to reconstruct the bastard when she got it home.
"He's not happy about the fines, Marie."
"I imagine not. Sorry about that. We'll make it up."
"You're due back to handle offloading."
"Charles can do it. He's perfectly competent."
"What are you doing?"
"Trade information. Data. What else is the Trade Bureau for?"
"Fine. Fine. I'll tell him.—Tell Tom get his rear back on duty. You don't need him here."
Saja was Tom's officer, on the bridge. Saja had reason to ask.
Saja had actual need-to-know where Tom was. And should, by now. She turned away from the monitor and looked at him straight-on, with the least disturbed inkling of things not quite in order.
"He's not with me," she said. "Have the cops got him?"
"The cops didn't arrest anybody, either side. He's not with you. He's not on the ship. I called them five minutes ago, max."
Wandering around the docks looking for her. "The damned fool," she said.
"That ship's out of dock, Marie. It's outbound."
She knew where the ship was. She looked at the clock on the wall of the Trade Bureau. Hours out. Computers ate up human time—you lost track between keystrokes and during processing.
And Saja was saying Tom could be withthat ship?
She didn't think so. "He's not that stupid. He's searching the bars, is where he is."
"We've got people all over the bars. We're looking. For you. And for Tom. You're accounted for. Where's Tom?"
"Wherever he thinks I'd go. Bars. Sleepovers.—Miller Transship." She didn't want to suggest that last name. She didn't want them forewarned. But—" Corinthian'sbroker. Miller Transship. Warehouses. Phone Sprite-com, get them to inquire at Miller's, just down the row from Corinthian'sberth."
"Miller's," Saja said, and went, she supposed, for a phone.
They just weren't searching right. Tom was going to duck them. The kid was no fool.
But the more they stamped around searching for the damn kid, disturbing evidence…
Most urgently, they needed to find the damn kid and quit stirring things up, before he or they did do something stupid.
She was uneasy. Couldn't really remember where she was in the data problem. Damn the brat, he'd always had a knack for disturbing her concentration.
And Tom probably wasstaying out of reach and deliberately out of touch with Spritesimply because he thought shewas staying out of touch (true, until now) and he was looking for her. It could take a while to reel him in.
Though you'd think once Corinthianhad gone on the board for Departure, the kid would catch a notion that the game was up at that point, retreat, call Spriteand report in… since she, at that point, had no more reason to stay under-surface.
Damn.
He wouldshow up. He hadto show up. She didn't want to leave her search looking for an erratic, jump-at-shadows brat who was old enough to take care of himself.
She jabbed a key, dumped the current operation, pocketed her data-cards on the way to the door, and swore to kill the kid when she found him.
—ii—
TOM STARED AT THE CEILING, feeling the push on the ship and thinking how if he'd had the presence of mind to have counted when the shove started he could have told something about the actual v, based on the undock pattern.
But what did it matter? Corinthianwas going and he was going with it,
No way Spritecould throw over that government contract to chase after him. Not even Marie could talk them into it.
Only hope to God that Mischa's fears were exaggerated and Corinthianwasn't going to lay for Spriteout in the dark.
Out in the same dark, a body could go out the airlock and never be reported, if his own biological father wanted to get rid of him. And what paternal interest had Austin Bowe ever needed in the offspring he'd probably… spacer-fashion… scattered on God-knew-what ships? Men didn't generally keep up with their own. They had their own ship-board nieces and nephews, if they had sisters. And always they had cousins. Men didn't have to give a damn. And Bowe hadn't a reputation for fatherly concern. The Bowe he'd heard about couldthrow a man out the airlock.
Better than some ways to go, he thought in morbid self-persuasion, while the ship ripped along toward that deep cold. The absolute zero was supposed to get you before you felt much. You froze solid before you could get a breath of vacuum. You frosted your lungs. Your eyes froze and your blood froze and you'd be floating with the dust, exactly the way your outbound breath had left you—until some star near enough went nova and you got shoved along on the wavefront and included in the infall of a next-generation star.
Or none might be near enough and you'd just drift there till entropy slowed down the stars for good.
A permanent sort of half-life, as it were.
Permanent as the galaxy. No damn fathersto deal with.
Father, hell! There had to be a word for a guy with as little invested as Austin Bowe.
Rapist talked about his relations with the mother in question. Society hadn't made a word for his relations with the kid that resulted.
Hadn't made a word for the situation between them or given him a word he wanted to say to Austin Bowe.
Thanks for screwing my mother? Thanks for not showing up till now. Screw you, sir, for a damned self-centered son of a bitch.