Finity's End - a Union-Alliance Novel (26 page)

"So…" he asked Madelaine, "what
is
going on? How did Fletcher get into it, besides as a bargaining chit? And why are we making deals with Quen? Or is that what we're
really
doing on this voyage? Who are we fighting? Mazian? Or
Union
?"

"This is topside information," Madelaine said, meaning what she told the junior first captain didn't go to the junior-juniors or even to Bucklin. "We were always anxious to get Fletcher out. We didn't expect to get Fletcher this round. We took him because we
could
take him. Quen happens to hold a general view of the situation with
Union
we
want her to act on, but we don't tell her that. We have to let her persuade
us
at great effort, or she'll start arranging other deals with otherp arties because she'll believe we folded too easy and we're up to something. So Fletcher wasn't at issue… we snatched him up because we could; we just didn't plan on him becoming a high-profile problem on this voyage."

Aside from the damage done his tight-knit command, he didn't like the ethical shading of the transaction he was hearing about, for Madelaine's own great-grandson. They were merchanters, and they bought and sold, but people shouldn't fit into a category of goods. In that regard he felt sorry for anyone caught in the turbulence around their dealings, Mallory's and Quen's. And if Fletcher detected the nature of the dealings, it could certainly explain Fletcher's state of mind.

"You're not to tell that," Madelaine said, extraneous to any prior understandings she'd elicited of him. Madelaine was drinking wine and maybe just a little bit more open than she'd have wanted to be. "Especially to Fletcher."

"You don't like Quen," JR observed. It seemed to him that Quen was an unanswered question, and what her dealings had been were never clear.

"I don't, Madelaine said. "Not personally. I admire her. I don't like her. She got personally involved with a stationer, kited off from
Estelle
because she was head over heels in love with a bright young station lawyer and nobody could prevent Elene doing any damn thing. It's uncharitable to say it, but that's the case. Elene was on station when her ship died because Elene was having her way in one of her romantical fancies. My Francesca was on station because she had no damn choice, medically speaking, and we had to transfer her off and go in fifteen minutes." Another sip of wine. "Now Elene's a hero of the
Alliance
and my granddaughter's dead of an overdose. Quen didn't do one thing to make her life easier while she was alive and alone there. Not one."

He was shocked, and tried to hide it. Madelaine had never unburdened that opinion to him. But he hadn't been in the line of command the last time they'd visited Pell and Madelaine's temper hadn't been ruffled by a sordid trade to get her great-grandson back, either.

"I blame Elene," Madelaine said. "I blame Elene that she left her own ship. I blame Elene that she didn't take Francesca in tow and provide a little personal friendship. Granted Elene was busy and Elene was pregnant, too, but if she ever extended a hand of friendship to my granddaughter before she hit the bottom I have yet to hear it. If my
Elizabeth
had lived to get back to Pell, she'd have had words for Quen. I reserve what I say. I'm only the girl's grandmother."

Francesca's mother, Elizabeth. Dead at
Olympus
. There were so many.

Madelaine nudged JR's arm with her wine glass. "Take a little extra care of my great-grandson. Don't waste him in the junior-juniors. I know he's an ass, but he's got possibilities. Personal favor."

JR drew in a slow, deep breath. He'd gotten snagged, broadsided, and boarded. Aunt Madelaine
was
the ship's chief lawyer.

"I'll try," he said

"All you can do," Madelaine agreed.

"Any special advice?" he asked Madelaine.

"For dealing with him? Grow all-over fur. The boy's had no
human
ties. Damned Pell courts." Sip of wine. The bottom of the glass, a little straw-colored liquid remaining. "Get me another wine, there's a love. James has come. I won't tell him what Fletcher did. None of us will. It just isn't important."

James Robert had come in, perhaps thinking he'd find a grateful, happy new member in the Family. Madelaine went in that direction, damage control, protection of her great-grandson, leaving him to get a refill at the bar, and one for himself while he was at it.

James Robert and Madelaine were in heavy discussion when he brought the wine. He put the glass in Madelaine's outheld hand, offered his other on the moment to the Old Man, who hadn't gotten across the room before Madelaine's interception, and the Old Man murmured an abstracted thanks and took it.

Talk among the seniors: a Union ship just sitting out there, having run recovery on a bottle of Scotch. Quen and some high-powered agreement in their own vital interest. Madelaine said it was tariffs, which pointed to a political agreement inside the
Alliance
. The secrecy smelled to high heaven of some kind of operation of Mallory's, while, third question, they were very publicly taking up trade again, in a move that had to be gossiped wherever merchanters docked… and the Fletcher incident had to dominate the gossip on Pell and everywhere else.

He had surmised their return to trade might be intended as a demonstration of
Alliance
power, a demonstration of the safety they hoped they'd created in the shipping lanes… at a critical moment when support of the starstation councils for the continued pirate hunt was wavering.

And at a time when
Union
was handing out special privileges to merchanters who wanted to sign on to wealthy
Union
instead of the economically struggling
Alliance
. He didn't want to focus his career on fighting Union activity: he'd trained all his life to fight Mazianni, and that was where his interest was, but he could see that
Union
's actions, actions which Quen would find of interest, constituted a smart move. Getting enough merchanters voluntarily signed into
Union
would win for
Union
without a shot what the War hadn't gained for them by all the ordnance expended. If merchanters started drifting over the Line and signing with
Union
in any significant numbers the universe could see humanity polarized again into two major camps. Then, depend on it, merchanters would see themselves first regulated to the hilt, then entirely replaced by
Union
's own ships: a merchanter desperate enough to clutch at Union financial support wasn't analyzing his future further than the next set of bills.

It was the very situation that had started the War, the move to take over the merchanters this time coming not from Earth's side, but from
Union
's side of the border. One would think
Union
might have learned from Earth's experience with the merchanters. Not so. The merchanters had formed their own state, at Pell, and with a handful of stations balancing commitment between the Merchanter Alliance and
Union
, and now
Union
started pushing to get the merchanters. The starstations independence would go next, and then they'd reach for Earth. If Mazian didn't step in.

Or if Mallory and Quen and the Old Man of
Finity's End
didn't draw a line and say: no further.

And was
that
the message that went with the bottle in a black, starry sea? A warning—from Mallory
and
from
Finity
, Stay our allies? Don't provoke us with your recruitments and your ship-building? Yours is the glass house?

It was certain in their own minds that Mazian had a secret base, somewhere within 20 lights of Pell, and that was an immense volume of space to search for someone determined not to be found. The rest of human habitation was concentrated in a comparatively small sphere at the center, where Mazian could strike without warning—and escape to that remote base.

It required a network of informants to establish any kind of security.
Union
didn't have that network. Mallory did. Mallory—who was once
of
the Fleet. And they were such a network, they, the merchanters… who wouldn't talk to
Union
or
Alliance
stationside officials with anything like the freedom with which they talked to each other.

From Mazian's view, however, finding the heart of human civilization wasn't a question of searching a 40-light sphere. It was a concentrated area Mazian could easily strike, without warning and with a choice of targets that could send chills down any civilized backbone. If a junior could venture a guess of his own, it was worse than that: Mazian's aim might be to establish multiple bases, scattered points from which to threaten the center—and Mazian's overriding strategy might not be a crushing military strike but rather evading Mallory, waiting for Union to get overconfident, and then maneuvering the Alliance or Earth into so deep a diplomatic crisis with Union that the Alliance had no hope
except
to forgive Mazian and recall him to take over the government. Then Mazian could use those bases to hit
Union
. But merchanters would bleed in the process.

Against that backdrop, the captains of
Finity'sEnd
had held their meeting with Quen and gotten some agreement out of her that they had wanted. Meanwhile they were going back to trading,
Union
was still refusing to let
Alliance
merchanters into its internal routes without them signing up as Union-based, and the Old Man had
wanted
Quen to bribe him into supporting her in some scheme of her devising.

What in
hell
game were they playing?

He went back to the bar, picked up a glass of wine for himself. Bucklin and
Chad
intercepted him on their own inquiry, having been out of the loop.

"So was that all about Fletcher?" Bucklin asked

"Some of it. Madelaine being his grandmother." Great-grandmother, but in a Family's tangled exogamous web of greats, second and third cousins and nieces and nephews on lives extended by time dilation and rejuv, you compressed generations unless you were seriously trying to track what you were to each other. "She's taking a personal interest. She wants this kid in very badly."

Silence greeted that revelation.

"About the drink," JR said. "Let it slide. He didn't know the rules. I'll think about where he fits. He's
not
Jeremy's size. The body's as mature as we are. The education's just way behind."

"Yeah, well." Bucklin sighed, and they took their drinks and walked over to the rest of the junior-seniors, who'd staked out a table for eight. They pulled more chairs over, until it was a dense, tight group, Lyra, Toby, Ashley, Sue and Connor, Nike, Wayne, and Chad: as many different looks as they had star-scattered fathers. Lyra, a year younger than Bucklin and third in command, was the family's sole almost redhead, sporting an array of earrings and bracelets she couldn't wear in ops. Lyra, and beside her, Toby, whose brown complexion and shoulder-trailing kinky locks made that pair of cousins about as far apart as the Family genes stretched.

Lyra and Toby had brought a dedicated bottle of wine from the bar. Bucklin and he also had wine. The rest had soft drinks and fruit juice, and that was the line Fletcher had crossed without permission: Fletcher had assumed, maybe because he'd done it on station, that he had a right.

"Fletcher," JR said by way of explanation, "had a run-in with Vince, you'll have noticed. He opted for his quarters. Presumably he got there. Jake checked."

"So did you explain the rules?" Connor asked over his own soft drink. By custom, they didn't follow formal courtesies in rec hall or in mess. Complaints were allowed; and he could have figured it would be Connor and Sue that spoke up for the rule book.

"Fletcher's got a possible Extenuating." He saw frowns settle not only on those two faces but all around. "He's a junior-junior, but
Madison
said it. The body physiologically isn't."

"Body's not mind," Nike said, and swept an indignant hand from Wayne and Connor on her right to
Chad
, Sue, and Ashley on her left. "When do
we
get wide-open liberty on the docks? When do
we
sleepover where we like? Or take a wine off the bar in front of the seniors and everybody?"

"You know when." He didn't want this debate over the issue, and their challenge to him
was
the answer. No, maturity wasn't identical from ship to station on the biological or the mental level, and there wasn't a neat equivalency. The off-again on-again hormonal flux of time-dilated pubescent bodies that was the number one reason they didn't get bar privileges was precisely the hormonally driven emotional flux that set their nerves in an uproar when they were crossed. His physical-sixteens and -fifteens were a pain in the ass; he was just emerging from that psychological cocktail himself, and while at physical and mental seventeen-to-eighteen and chronological and educational twenty-six he was just getting his own nerves to a calm, sensible state. Yes, he still flared off, a besetting sin of his. But the infinite wisdom of the Way Things Worked on a short-handed ship had made him senior-most junior, responsible for all the junior crew that was still in that stage.