Finity's End - a Union-Alliance Novel (40 page)

Meanwhile the
Belize
senior captain had had a very cordial session with the Old Man of
Finity's End
, and word was that bottles from
Finity's
cargo, duly tariffed and taxed, were making their way to various ships. If spies were taking notes of the number of captains who got together in a shifting combination of venues, they must have a full-time occupation; what worried him, and what he was sure would worry the Old Man, was the likelihood that
Belize
's
internal security was as lax as its concept of restricted residency.

If the
Belize
captain had talked too much to his own crew, some of their business could have gotten into that sleepover room last night and right into the ears of curious Champlainers.

Who now were outbound.

It had to be a successful stay on dockside, Fletcher said to himself: Jeremy had a stomachache and all of them had run out of money. Here they were, standing in line for customs three days earlier than their scheduled board call, a moving line. Customs was just waving them through.

Their loading must have gone faster than estimated. And Fletcher was relatively proud of himself. He'd had the pocket-com switch in the right position; he'd gotten the call, figured out the complexities of the pocket-com to be able to key in an acknowledgement that they were coming, and gotten the juniors to the dock with no more delay than a modest and reasonable request from Jeremy to make a last-minute dive into a shop near the Pioneer to get a music tape he'd been eyeing. And some candy.

So Jeremy wasn't so sick as to forswear future sweets.

And instead of the slow-moving clearance of passports in their exit, they advanced through customs at a walk, flashed the passport through the reader on the counter, only observed by a single customs agent, tossed their duffles uninspected onto the moving cargo belt for loading, and walked up the ramp to the access tube, where for brief periods the airlock stood open at both ends to let groups of them walk through.

"They
are
in a hurry," Linda said when she saw that.

"New Old Rules," Vince said. "Maybe they're going to do that after this. No more lines."

"We've got a security alert," a senior cousin behind them said, breath frosting in the chill of the yellow, ribbed access.

"About what?" Jeremy asked.

"Just a ship we don't like. But we're not going out alone." The cousin ruffled Jeremy's hair and Jeremy did the time immemorial wince and flinch. "No need to worry."

"So who are they?" Fletcher asked, not sure what
security alert
entailed, whether it was a trade rivalry or a question of guns and something far more serious.

"What we've got," the cousin behind that cousin said—one was Linny and the other was Charlie T.—"what we've got is a rimrunner for the other side. But we've
also
got an escort. Union ship
Boreale
is going to go our route with us."

A
Union
ship?

"Do we trust them?" Fletcher asked.

"Sometimes," Charlie T. said. And about that time the airlock opened up and started letting them through, a fast bunch-up and a press to get on through and out of the bitter cold. They went through in a puff of fog that condensed around them. They'd put down a metal grid for traction as they entered the corridor, and it was frosted and puddled from previous entries.

Mini-weather, Fletcher thought, his head spinning with the possibilities of Union escorts, an emergency boarding. But the cousins around him remained cheerful, talking most about Mariner restaurants and what they'd found in the way of bargains in the shops. A cousin had a truly outlandish shirt on under the silvers. And it was a strong contrast to his last boarding in that he knew exactly where he was going, he knew they'd been posted to galley for their undock duty—laundry would have been entirely unfair to draw this soon—and he was actually looking toward
his
cabin,
his
bunk,
his
mattress and the comforts of his own belongings after the haste and nonstop party of dockside, which he'd thought would be hard to leave, when he'd gone out. He'd bought some books he was anxious to read, he'd bought games that promised hours of unraveling, and even a block of modeling medium—a long time since he'd had the chance to do any model-making; he'd used to be good at it.

He took the sharp turn into the undock-fitted rec hall, herded his three charges in to the rows of rails and standing cousins, but he had second thoughts about Jeremy.

"Are you all right?" he asked, delaying at the start of the row and holding up traffic. "You want to talk to Charlie, maybe get something for your stomach? Maybe go to the sit-down takehold?"

"No," Jeremy said, and flashed a valiant grin. "I'm fine."

"If he gets sick everybody'll kill him," Linda said helpfully as Jeremy went on into the row.

"Just if you don't feel right, tell me."

"No, I'm fine," Jeremy said, and they all packed themselves into the eighth row among an arriving stream of cousins.

Everybody had called to confirm they were on their way, customs was expediting, and the ship was go when ready, that was the buzz floating in the assembly. It was the kind of thing
Finity
had used to do, or so the talk around him indicated; and at the rate the prelaunch area was filling up they were going to be clearing dock… the estimate was… maybe in twenty minutes.

Boreale
, their Union escort, was on the same shortened schedule.

"What did this ship do?" Fletcher asked of Charles T. "Why are we suspicious?"

"It left dock early. Going our way."

"Is it going to shoot at us, or what?"

"It could have that intention," Charles T. said. "That's why
Boreale
is going with us."

"What they think," said another cousin, turning around from the row in front, "is that
Champlain
—that's the ship in question—is going to report somewhere ahead of us. It's an outside possibility it might want to take us on. But not two of us.
Boreale's
a merchanter only in its spare time, and it'd
like
that ship to make a move. If we can build a case that ship's Mazianni, there are alternatives we can take at Voyager."

"They've had a watch on our hull the whole time we're here"a third cousin said. "So we're clean."

Watching for what
? Fletcher wondered uneasily, but his mind leapt to uneasy conclusions.

"Don't suppose they've watched
theirs
?" Charles T. said with a wicked grin.

"Tempting," Parton said.

The juniors were all ears. Even Jeremy.

Another flood of cousins poured in. "
Ten minutes
," the intercom said in the same moment. "
We've got a potential bandit, gentle cousins, but our intrepid allies out of Union space are going to pace us in fond hopes of getting the goods on the rascals. We'll make specific safety announcements before jump, but we're clearing dock in plenty of time for
Champlain
to figure the odds, which we think will discourage a wise captain from lingering to meet us in the jump-point. We will be doing an unusual system entry just in case our piratical friends have strewn our path with any hindrances, and we will post the technicals on the maneuver for those of you who have a curiosity about the matter. Welcome aboard, welcome aboard, welcome aboard. We hope your hangovers are less than you deserve. Fare well to
Belize
and Mariner, and fond hopes for Esperance. Voyager will be a working port, we regret to say, with restricted liberty and fast passage
."

There were groans.

"We're going to
work
?" Vince cried indignantly.

"Sounds like an interesting stop," a cousin said. "Are we hauling this trip, or how much
did
we load?"

Time spun down. A last few cousins ran in, JR and Bucklin among them.
Chad
, Connor and Sue followed, and then the rest of the juniors… probably on duty, Fletcher said to himself. The icy mess in the corridor was a likely junior job, of the sort that wouldn't wait for undock, during which icemelt could run and metal grids could slide.

Odd thought… how much he'd gotten to figure out without half thinking about it.
His
ship.
His
junior-juniors.
His
roommate. He'd been out on liberty, he'd come back in charge of three kids who'd come around somehow to admitting that seventeen waking years beat twelve and thirteen in a lot of respects: he'd been in
his
element, and the one he was coming back to wasn't foreign, either, now.

He knew these people. He knew the sounds he'd heard before, and wished there were a way to ask, when the undocking started, exactly what sound was what. He'd stood and watched ships undock, from outside, and the lights would be flashing and the hatches would seal, and the access tube would retract. Then the lines would uncouple, the gantry arm would pull back.

Then the grapples. That was the loud one. The jolt. Somebody started a loud and rowdy song, that subbed in the word
Belize
, and he found himself with a grin on his face as
Finity's End
came free and powered back from dock.

One song topped another one, and they ran out of the rowdy ones and into the sentimental, good-bye to the port, good-bye to lost loves…

He had an urge to chime in, but he was too conscious of the juniors beside him and he couldn't sing worth a damn. He could listen. He could feel a little shiver of gooseflesh on his arms, a little shortness of breath when the song wound on to foreign ports and lost friends.

They knew. He wasn't different. He knew he was slipping under a spell, and that Downbelow was getting farther and farther away. He'd heard about meetings, in the chaff of conversation before undock. He'd heard about the captains getting together and talking about peace.

And now
Union
was escorting an
Alliance
ship?

He'd thought he understood the universe, or all of it he needed to know. And things weren't what he thought.

"
Clear to move,"
the intercom said. "
Twenty minutes to get your baggage and ten to take hold, cousins. Move, move, move
."

The front row filed out to the corridor and the next row was hot on their heels, everybody moving with dispatch when it was their turn.

Cargo spat out baggage at high speed and fair efficiency. He'd bought a silly cartoon trinket to hang from the tag, a distinction easier to spot, he'd learned, than the stenciled name; and Jeremy had urged him to buy it. Other people had colored cords, plastic planets, tassels… Jeremy's was a metal enameled tag that said Mars, and a cartoon character of no higher taste than his. Jeremy's duffle was already in the stack, but his wasn't.

Jeremy carted his off. Fletcher saw his own come down the chute and grabbed it, double-checking the tag to be sure.

"Fletcher," JR said, turning up beside him, and instinct had him braced for unpleasantness as he straightened and looked JR in the eyes.

"Good job," JR said. "I can't say all of it, even yet, but we've had a situation working at this port… same that put that ship out ahead of us, and it wasn't a place to let our junior-juniors in on the matter, or to let them wander the dockside on their own. Toby and
Wayne
kind of kept an eye in your direction, you may have observed at first, but you didn't
need
help, so they just pretty well left things to you and after that we got swept into running security for the captains' business and
didn't
check back, in the absence of distress signals. But we didn't feel we had to. So we do appreciate it, and I'm speaking for all of us."

He wasn't used to well-dones. He didn't have a repertoire of suitable polite remarks. His face went hot and he hoped it didn't show.

"Thanks," he said. If he was one of the Willetts or the Velasquezes he'd have learned how to shed compliments like water. But he wasn't. And stood there holding a duffle with a plastic, large-eyed cartoon wolf for an identifying tag. The one JR had against his leg sported a classy Sol One enamelled tag, which
he'd
undoubtedly bought above Earth itself.

"We got out all right," JR said, "and regarding what the captain was talking about to you before we made dock… and the
reason
we're running with an escort right now… I'm warning you in advance we're not going to get much of a liberty at Voyager. We can't guarantee their cargo handling and we're going to have to search every can. This is not going to be a fun operation. But we have to do it. We have to look as if we trust Voyager without actually
trusting
Voyager. Again, that's for you to know. The junior-juniors aren't to know the details."

"And I
am
?" He couldn't help it He didn't see himself in the line of confidences.

JR looked him straight in the face. "You need to know.
You're
watching the potential hostages. And you need to know."

"You don't know
me
. Where do you think I'm so damn trustworthy?"

JR outright grinned. "Because you'd warn me like that."

He'd never been outflanked like that. He shut his mouth. Had to be amused.

"
Takehold in ten minutes
," the intercom advised them, and JR picked up his baggage.

"Got to walk my quarter," JR said. And set off. "Don't forget your drug pickup!" JR called back.

He would have forgotten. Remembered it by tomorrow, but he would have forgotten. Fletcher took his duffle, slung it over his shoulder and walked in JR's direction far enough to reach the medical station and the drug packets set out in bundles.

Take 6
, the direction said, a note taped to the side of the bin on the counter, and the bin was three-quarters empty. He came up as JR was initialing the list as having picked up his. JR took his six, and Fletcher signed in after and filled his side pocket with the requisite small packets, asking himself, as his source of information walked away, what circumstance could demand
six
doses.