Finity's End - a Union-Alliance Novel (25 page)

JR held a glass he didn't want to be holding. He handed it to Vince, restraining himself from immediate comment. He didn't know what exchange had preceded Vince's complaint to him. Clearly cousin Fletcher had just overloaded on something, be it wine or family.

He refused to get into he-saids with immediately involved junior-juniors and walked to the bar to learn the plain facts. "Nate. Did you give Fletcher wine?"

Nate was one of the senior crew, now, lately of the junior crew, and Nate looked distressed. "No. He just took it. I didn't know what to do. Has he got leave?"

"Not officially, no. You did right. You didn't make an incident. Vince and the junior-juniors called him on it, though, and he flared and left."

"The guy wasn't real straightforward about asking for permissions, what it seems to me. I think he knew it was off limits."

"Yeah. You and I both noticed. If he does it again just let him. I'll talk to Legal and we'll find out whether there were agreements with him before he boarded, or what."

"Trouble?" Bucklin turned up by him at the bar, Bucklin couldn't have missed Fletcher's leaving.

"Vince sounded off about the drink. Fletcher's pissed."

"Cousin Fletcher came aboard pissed. Counting he was hauled here by the cops
and
the stationmaster, I'm not personally surprised he and young Vince should go critical. "

"It's on our watch," JR sighed. "We got him, he's ours."

"Maybe we could have airlock drill," Bucklm's tone was wistful, the suggestion outrageous.

"I'm afraid that won't solve it." He couldn't quite joke about it, tempest in an infinitesimal teacup though it might be. "Captain-sir wants him. Madelaine wants him. I'm afraid we ultimately have to work him in."

"Between you and me only, this has a bad feeling." This time Bucklin wasn't making a joke at all. "This guy doesn't want to be here. I mean, it's hard enough to work him in if we wanted him. We're busy. We've got nothing but unskilled labor in him. We had a fine thing going before we got lucky in the court, and I appreciate we had a legal problem, but—where are we going to fit him in?"

Bucklin left his complaint hanging after that, and after a moment, in his silence on the issue, Bucklin walked away. Bucklin wasn't of a rank to say what was floating in the air unsaid.
We
don't want him didn't half sum up the feeling among the senior-juniors. They had had an integrated team that was turning their last-born batch of juniors, ending with Jeremy, into a tight-knit unit that would put the senior-juniors in crew posts in another couple of years, with Jeremy and Vince and Linda their best backup for what was going to be, with adequate luck, a sudden crop of babies forthcoming from this run. The senior-juniors were a team tested literally under fire. However thin they were in numbers, he saw the makings of a damned
fine
command in what his seniors had left him and what he'd spent the last seven years putting together. Supposing now that women did become pregnant, and that the nursery did acquire a new batch of kids, he and Bucklin and Lyra had plans to set Jeremy and Vince and Linda in charge of the ones who'd come out of the nursery as junior-juniors at just about the time that trio hit physical maturity. It had all been going to work out neatly, and
then
they got cousin Fletcher, of a physical size to fit with senior-juniors, basic knowledge far beneath that of junior-juniors, and a surly attitude to boot. Add to that a late-to-board-call stunt unprecedented in the history of the ship, for which Fletcher had proved nothing but self-righteous and angry.

It was wrong, the whole blown-out-of-proportion incident just now with the wine glass was just damned
wrong
, both what Fletcher had done walking out and what Vince had done lighting into him and what Jeremy had done standing confusedly in the middle. It wasn't the drink. It was Fletcher's attitude that made no way for anybody to back down; and as the saying went, it had happened on his watch.

On one level the Old Man didn't want to know the details, the excuses, or the extenuating circumstances of the junior captain's failures; on another level, the Old Man would rapidly know every detail that
he
knew the minute he walked in here and wanted to know where Fletcher was, and there was nothing worse in God's wide universe than an interview with Captain James Robert Neihart, Sr. when your tally of mistakes went catastrophic—as it had just done in that little damn-you-all gesture of Fletcher's.

He, supposed to handle things, had thought that in putting Fletcher with the junior-juniors he had arranged Fletcher a berth that wouldn't expose his ignorance, put demands on his behavior, or burden his own essential and often working team with constantly babysitting Fletcher.

Yes, the senior crew including the Old Man had a load of personal guilt over cousin Francesca, over the fact they
hadn't
made it back in time to prevent what they were relatively sure had been a suicide.

Yes, Francesca had named her kid one of the signal names in
Finity's
history, one of the names which, like
James Robert
, you didn't just bestow on your kid without asking and without the bloodline to permit it.

Yes, Francesca had named him that name before she'd known she'd be left—she had done it, he guessed, not out of bitterness, or to imply a guilt they all felt, but to declare to a station who otherwise despised spacers that this was no common kid.

Unfortunately that name had stayed on after her suicide to confound
Finity
command, attached to a kid in the original Fletcher's line, a kid caught in the wheels of jurisdiction and power games, a kid who
by
that name and
Finity's
reputation necessarily attracted attention in spacer circles.

And
yes
, James Robert had wanted to get a kid named Fletcher, his grand-nephew, out of the gears and out of station view. There'd be no shameful appendix to the life of the first Fletcher, to append his name to a kid hellbent—JR had seen the police reports—on conspicuous and public disaster, right down to his dive for the outback.

Yes, Francesca's situation had been a tragedy. But a lot of people on
Finity
had had a lot harder situation than Francesca's, in his estimation.

His
mother was one, dead in the decompression. And Jeremy's. And Vince's half-brother. Or ask Bucklin, who'd lost every close relative in his whole line except Madison, and Madison, who'd lost everyone but Bucklin.

Damn right they were close, the ones left of the old juniors' group, the ones like himself and Bucklin, who'd huddled together in nursery while the ship underwent stresses that killed the weak. They'd seen kids grow weaker and weaker until eventually they just didn't come out of trank at a given jump.

Damned right they'd earned the pride they had and damned right they didn't like all they'd won handed to a stranger on a platter, particularly when the stranger bitterly, insultingly rebuffed what welcome he was given.

He had a situation building, a resentment in his command. And it was his job to find a way to deal Fletcher in.

"So how is he?"
Madison
asked, second captain, and JR felt heat rise to his face, wondering what answer he possibly could find.

"He's not happy." To his left a guitar hit a quiet passage, strings ringing with a poignantly soft tune he'd heard since he was small; "Rise and Go." Parting of lovers. Partings of every kind. It was cliché. It never failed to send the chills down his arms and the moisture to his eyes. It disturbed logic. Prompted frankness. "Neither are we with him, sir, plainly speaking, sir."

"We had to take him,"
Madison
said. "This was our chance. We couldn't leave him."

"I'm aware of our obligation, sir. And mine. I'm not begging off from the problem, only advising senior command that I've not made significant headway with him."

"Not only
our
obligation,"
Madison
said. "
Elene Quen
had a part in this."

That small, added information, so directly and purposefully delivered, struck him off balance. And at that moment Madelaine wandered over with a drink in hand.

"Jake's called ops downside," Madelaine said, "just to be sure, you know, that Fletcher made his quarters without incident."

"I think he did," JR said. The kid was angry. Not stupid. And if
Madison
's information bore out into something besides Family determination to recover one of their own, there might be justification for that anger. Quen. Politics. Deals.

"He swiped a drink," Madelaine said to
Madison
. "Pell Station let him, I'd be willing to bet. Station rules. He didn't know he needed a go-ahead."

Madison
frowned. "The body's old as JR, here. It's the mind that's under-aged. Your call, junior captain. What
will
you do with him?"

"My call," JR said. "But this is a new one. Where do you rate him, sir? Junior-junior, or not? He's Jeremy's age and far less experienced."

"
And
physically the same as your age. Look up the statutory years."
Madison
spotted someone coming in by the up-ring entry, and drifted off with that quandary posed, information half-delivered.

JR gazed after him in frustration.
He
drank, judiciously and seldom, and
he
had twenty-six years for mental ballast. He also had the responsibility for issuing such privileges to juniors under him. Was
Madison
saying give Fletcher senior-junior privileges right off? He didn't think so.

And this hint of deals with Quen, that might have complicated the situation with understandings and arrangements… no one had told him.

"What's this," he asked Madelaine, "that the name
of Quen
came up just now? I know why we took him, on principle. He's
Fletcher
. But what are we
doing
taking him in on this run, not asking for him after he's local eighteen and the court's off his case? Is there something essential that I'm not hearing, here?"

"Oh, there's a fair amount you missed that night at dinner."

"With Quen? What did I miss?"

"The fact Quen very ably moved the courts to give us Fletcher when she wanted to, after telling us for twelve years that she couldn't budge them. Now, that may be an unfair suspicion. Possibly her position has changed: possibly she has more power now; perhaps she simply called in a tall stack of favors." Madelaine stopped—he knew that silence of hers: she was suddenly wondering how much to tell the junior captain on a particular point, and a blurted question from him right now would make her sure he wasn't qualified to know. So he stood quietly while Madelaine took a sip of wine and thought about her next piece of information.

"Quen wants a ship. She wants a
Quen
ship. And she wants James"—Madelaine was one of a handful who called the senior captain
James
and not
James Robert
—"to stand with her and get it approved."

"That, I already know."

"But it's more than that. Like Mallory, Quen is worried about
Union
's next moves. Thinks the next war is going to be a trade war.
Union
's building ships it proposes to put into trade and saying they don't violate the Treaty. We of course say differently. Fletcher's an issue on his own and always has been, but he's become an issue of trust between us and Quen. Quen proves to us she's got power on Pell by delivering Fletcher to us, maneuvering past Pell's red tape—and we'll stand by her in the Council of Captains and use our considerable stack of favor-points with other ships to swing votes on the issue she wants—if she backs us. We want tariffs lowered. An
unrelated
understanding, mark that."

He did. There was no linkage between the two events because both parties agreed there wasn't a linkage. Yes,
Finity
could fail to carry out their part of the deal, take Quen's gift of Fletcher
and
go on to oppose Quen in Council, because there wasn't a linkage. But if
Finity
betrayed her, Quen wouldn't be their ally on something else they wanted
her
vote on.

And what was there to deal for? Quen wanted a Quen ship: understandable. What was there that
Finity
would be wanting from Quen? Lower tariffs didn't sound at all related to the battle they'd been fighting against Mazian. It affected merchanter profits and the price of goods. That was all that he saw.

Tariffs affected trade; trade affected international affairs. Did the question have any relation to that Union ship out there, the most notable anomaly in this voyage besides their own declaration they were going back to merchanting? Quen detested
Union
, so he'd heard. And Quen had traded them the kid they'd held hostage for seventeen years because
now
Quen wanted to build ships.

Build ships to keep
Union
from building ships to operate essentially on trade routes within
Union
. That was a delicate and sticky point: pre-War and post-War, all commercial trade routes in existence had been independent merchanter freighter routes—all, that was, except the two routes between Cyteen and its outermost starstations. On those two routes
Union
had always used its own military transport, in supply of, the merchanters were given to understand, fairly spartan stations, probably populated by
Union
's tailor-made humanity, for what he knew. No merchanter in those days had been interested in going there. That mistake had given
Union
a foothold in merchanter operations.