"Shut up! God! give me a little understanding! Where was your advice when it could have done some good?"
"I don't recall I was consulted. Cajoled, entreated, asked for illegal acts, but consulted…"
"How is he in bed?"
"Who?"
"My half-brother, dammit. How good?"
"We are suspicious, aren't we?"
"He's dangerous as hell. A Family Boy? All full of conscience? All full of principles? My father's off his head. I'm not! I've nothing against Hawkins personally. But nobody sees, nobody sees a damned thing dangerous in him!"
"And wecan't find him," Capella said. "I don't see Austin disturbed. I see the captain quite, quite calm—considering the gravity of the circumstances. Possibly because he's not speaking to you. Or—possibly—"
That veer sideways took a second to think about. Two seconds. "The son of a bitch ran for the ship? And Austin didn't say?"
"It isa place we haven't searched," Capella said. The sandwich and rum arrived, which meant a brief distraction to sign the tab.
"He wouldn't," Christian said.
The waiter left. Capella took a bite of sandwich and swallowed. "I don't know. It'd be the smartest thing elder brother could do, in his situation—supposing he's noticed the passport's fake."
"No. Surely not."
"We are down to surely nots. Aren't we?"
"Point."
"Doesn't cost anything. " Another bite. Then Capella's eye strayed. She swallowed, belatedly. He looked, in the chance the distraction was named Hawkins.
Negative. He saw nothing to attract Capella's attention. Bar traffic, nothing but.
But Capella took the paper napkin and wrapped the sandwich. Tossed off half the drink at two gulps.
"What isit?" he asked.
"Somebody I don't want to meet. Just sit still. Don't attract attention."
" Whatsomebody?"
"Chrissy. Just listen. Stay calm. In a moment I'm going to get up and go, and you sit here long enough to see if anybody follows me. Then you get up at your leisure and go left outside, go left, just keep traveling. I'll watch for you and intercept."
"What in hell's going on? Pella? Is it cops?"
"Just do it, dammit. Man in a grey shirt, blue glitz, dark hair, can't miss him. " Capella's eyes tracked something past his shoulder, cold as deep ice. "If he follows, don't let on, just keep walking. I'll be watching. Just wait till I'm clear plus some. If he follows me… still, you follow. We steer this to a venue we like. Got it?"
He didn't. Hadn't. Not the fine details of what Capella proposed to do about it.
But Capella slid out of her seat and walked, quietly, for the door, while he tried to pick out the newcomer she'd described, and did. He was giving an order at the bar, meaning he planned to stay; or asking a question, which might send him to their table: Capella wasn't exactly inconspicuous in an establishment. At least the guy didn't look in his direction.
Until the bartender pointed at his table.
Immediately the guy and two others started over. It wasn't in the instructions. Neither was this guy bringing help with him.
He sat still. Hell, he was a Corinthianofficer, not open to hassle or harassment without involving more ante than any other ship might want. So he looked them up and down like germs and stayed his position.
"Looking for Capella," the first guy said, him in grey and blue; and leaned a knuckle on the table-surface. "Where'd she go?"
"I dunno. Back to the ship. " That was a right-hand turn from here. "She was going to check something. Why?"
Blue-and-grey made a flip of the hand at the muscle behind ' him. One left, presumably on Capella's track. That tore it.
"Wait a minute," he said.
"Just a personal matter," blue-and-grey said.
"With my wife?"
Blue-and-grey stepped back, looking shocked, and laughed outright. It was an unpleasant face. Somebody a woman might have been interested in, maybe, but this was a man that'd knife you, this was a man who still wore open shirts when the waistline was getting a little much for skintights.
This was a man he didn't like, on instant instinct.
"You?" blue-and-grey asked, still laughing. And started to walk out.
The trouble was, he was still figuring how this fit with Capella's safety, which occupied all circuits and input a wait-count while the sumbitch with the mouth was walking to the door on him, while his gut level reaction, to grab that sumbitch by the throat, had adrenaline flooding his system and doing no good at all for the brain.
He carried a knife in his boot. So, he figured, did the two leaving, and so would their friend, the one he'd misdirected down the dock.
Meanwhile, if blue-and-grey and his friend were thinking at all, they'd guess he'd misdirected them, and head the other way out of here, on Capella's track, if they hadn't had a man outside to catch an escapee in the first place.
It went against the grain to call for help. But he took the com out—this close to the ship, he didn't need the phonelink—and punched in, on his deliberate way to the door. " Corinth-com, this is Christian, in Jaco's, we got a code six tracking one of ours spinward out of here, guy in blue and grey, extreme bad manners, relay and get me immediate help here."
Cops routinely monitored the coms as well as the ship-to-station links, and that was too damn bad. Trouble was headed at Capella's back and he was on the way—it wasn't so much what blue-and-grey might do to Capella that scared him… it was the ruckus bound to explode if somebody pulled a knife or a piece of macho argument on Corinthian'schief spook— Corinthiandidn't want any more legal trouble, and bodies were so hard to—
Something hit his head—dropped him to one knee with stars flashing red in his brain, and he came up at the target, straight-armed somebody he couldn't even see, approximately at the throat, impacted a face with the heel of his hand, surprise to him.
But the guy went down anyway, and papa hadn't taught him to turn his back on any attacker. He saw a shadow-someone in the red flashes and grey, trying to come up off the deck, and he rammed his hands down and his knee up. Bang. Guy went backwards, flat.
Thenhe whirled around and ran leftward up the dockside, on what he was sure was blue-and-grey's trail. Red flashes were still floating across his watering vision, it was still grey around the edges, and balance consequently wasn't a hundred percent, but he was dead on course, with blue-and-grey and one other some distance ahead of him.
He didn't see Capella. He kept going, double-fast, figuring on giving Mr. Sumbitch another quarrel to take his mind off her, figuring on his Corinthianbackup to be coming, and hoping some Corinthianwould have the basic sense to drag the sod he'd left behind him into the bar. Cops might ignore bar-business until it spilled onto the docks, but bodies in doorways were a guarantee of notice.
Just, if Capella had come out, too, and run into a trap…
"You!" he yelled, at blue-and-grey, with a stitch coming in his side and his head going around—he was too dizzy to chase the guys at a dead run. But run was what they did, then, damn the luck, just took out, both of them.
He ran, his head pounding like hell, vision fuzzing and tearing. He knocked shoulders with somebody in a better mood than he was—caught-step, recovered, chased the two until he knew he didn't know where they'd gone—then leaned against a friendly support girder near a pharmacy frontage, sweating and aching for breath.
Pocket-com was beeping, when things got quiet. He fumbled after it and thumbed it on. "Christian. Yeah. Lost the guy. Got a fix?"
"What in hell's going on?"