Finity's End - a Union-Alliance Novel (50 page)

Bed, the couch cushions arranged on the floor as a bunk, or the bare carpet, if they'd had nothing else—a chance to lie horizontal came more welcome than any time in Fletcher's life. The junior-juniors, past the giggle-stage and into complaints, mixed-gender accommodations and all, went down and fell mostly silent.

It was the second night, the second hard day, doing the same thing, over and over, until Fletcher saw can-surface and felt the protest in his feet even when he shut his eyes. The Vince-Jeremy argument about cold feet gave way to quiet from that quarter, darkness, and an exhaustion deeper than Fletcher had ever felt in his life.

Drunken spacers couldn't rouse any resentment, careening against the door, or whatever they'd done outside. Fletcher just shut his eyes.

Hadn't had supper. They'd had too many rest-area sandwiches and too much hot chocolate in the cargo hold office, and still burned off more energy than they'd taken in.

They'd showered once they got back to the Safe Harbor, was all, for the warmth, if nothing else, and Fletcher hoped the next shift got an immense amount done that they wouldn't have to do.

He shut his eyes… plunged into black…

… wakened to dimmest light and twelve-year-old voices telling each other not to wake Fletcher.

In the next second he saw a flash of light on the wall, moving shadows against it, and heard the door shut. He rolled over, saw nothing but black, got up, and banged his shin on a table.

"System. Light!" he ordered the robot, and, seeing the beds vacant, and hearing nothing from the bathroom: "Jeremy? Dammit!"

He flung on clothes, not bothering with the thermal shirt, just the work blues and the boots, and headed for the lift. Which didn't come.

He took the bare metal stairs and arrived down in the lobby. Third shift was coming in, a scatter of juniors.

Chad and Connor.

"Fletcher!" Connor said.

He ignored the hail and went into the dining room, hoping for junior-juniors in the press of spacers in the breakfast line.

"Fletcher." Connor. And Chad.

"I don't see the kids," he said.

"What'd they do?" Connor wasn't being sarcastic. It was concern. "Get past you?"

"Yes," he muttered, and went out into the lobby again, looking for twelve-year-olds in the press of spacers in dingy coveralls with non-
Finity
patches.

They were at the vending machines. Linda had a sealed cup in her hands.

"You got to watch them," Connor said at his shoulder.

"I was watching them," he retorted, wanting nothing to do with his help.

He went over to claim the kids.

"You weren't supposed to get up yet," Linda said, spotting him. "We were bringing you hot chocolate."

With cup in hand. He let go a breath. "For what?"

"For breakfast."

He looked at his watch. For the first time. It was shift-change. Alterdawn. 1823h. And kid-bodies were justifiably hungry.

"You want breakfast?"

"Yeah," Jeremy said. "Yessir."

He was disreputable, in yesterday's clothes, but he marched them into the restaurant, saw them fed.

A senior came by the table. "Board call, 0l00h tomorrow. We're moving faster than we'd hoped."

He thanked the senior, who was stopping at every table. 0100h was in their shift's night. They worked two shifts and then had to scramble to make board-call.

"Tonight?" Vince said, screwing up his face. Linda slumped over her synth eggs on a bridge of joined hands. Jeremy just looked worn thin.

They'd passed out painkillers in the rest-area, and they'd taken them, preventative of the soreness they might otherwise feel, but hands still hurt, feet still stung with the cold, noses were red and chapped, and as for recreation at this port, Fletcher ached for his own bed, his own things; they'd been too tired even to use the tapes when they'd gotten into the room. The vid hadn't even tempted the junior-juniors. Showers had, and hot water produced sleep. They'd just fallen into bed it seemed to him an hour ago.

And they had one more duty to get through, and then undocking.

At a time when they'd have been ready to fall into bed, they'd be boarding.

Twenty hundred hours and they had signatures on the line and scuttlebutt flying through Voyager corridors—as if the whole station had waited, listening, for what had become the worst-kept secret on the station: Voyager was getting an agreement with its local merchanters, with Mariner, with Pell and potentially with Union. News cameras showed up outside the restricted area where they'd held the meetings, and outside the customs zones of
every
starship in dock. Crowds gathered. The vid was live feed whenever the reporters could get anybody on camera to comment: it was the craziest atmosphere JR had ever seen. It
scared
him when he considered it, as—after a hike across the besieged docks, and attended by all the public notice outside—the Voyager stationmaster, three of the captains of
Finity's End
, and three of the scruffiest freighter-captains in civilized space, along with members of Voyager Station's administration and members of the respective crews, showed up in the foyer of the fanciest restaurant on Voyager.

The maitre d' hastened them to the reserved dining room.

JR was well aware of their own security, who had been on site inspecting the premises even before they'd confirmed the reservation. They'd gone through the kitchens down to the under-cabinet plumbing and they were standing guard over the foodstuffs allowing absolutely nothing else to be brought in unless
Finity
personnel brought it.

He was linked directly to Francie's Tech 1, who was running security on station.

He was linked to Bucklin, who was shuttling between his watch over the door and their security's watch on the kitchen.

He was linked to Lyra, who was linked to Wayne and Parton, who were back at the Safe Harbor Inn, literally sitting in the hallway to watch the rooms.

And he was linked to
Finity's
ops, which told him they were working as hard as humanly possible to clear this port while they still had something to celebrate, and to get them on toward Esperance, where things were far less sure, and where the celebration of an agreement would not be so universal.

Maybe it was an omen, however, that from no prior understanding, the party once seated in the dining room took five minutes to arrive at a completely unified menu choice, to help out the cooks, and
Finity
agreed to pick up the tab.

Besides providing a couple of cases of Scotch and three of Downer wine to the ecstatic restaurant owner, who provided several bottles back again, enough to make the party hazardously rowdy with the restaurant's crystal.

"To peace," was the toast. "And to trade!"

There was unanimous agreement.

"We may see this War finished yet,"
Jacobite
said.

"To the new age,"
Hannibal
proposed the toast, and they drank together.

"I began my life in peace," the Old Man said then. "I began my life in peace, I helped start the War, and I want to see the War completely done with; I want to see peace again, in my lifetime.
Then
I can let things go."

There was a moment of analysis. Then: "No, no," everyone had hastened to say, the polite, and entirely sincere, wishes that
Finity
would continue in command of the Alliance.

"No one else can do what you've done," the Voyager stationmaster said, and
Hannibal
added:

"Not by a damn sight,
Finity
."

The Old Man shook his head, and remained serious. "That's not the way it should be. It's
time
. I'm
old
. That's not a terrible thing. I never bargained for immortality, and I can tell you relative youngsters there comes a time when you aren't afraid of that final jump. A life has to end, and I'll tell you all, I want mine to end with peace. That's my requirement. All loose ends tied. I want this agreement."

There was lingering unease.

"You've got it, brother," Madison said with a laugh, and got the conversation started again, simply skipping by the statement as a given.

Madison, himself almost as old.

It was a difficult, an unprecedented moment. JR drew a whole breath only after Madison had smoothed things over, and asked himself then why the Old Man had let the mood slip, or why he'd talked about his concerns.

Getting tired, he said to himself. The captain hadn't slept but a couple of hours last night; and even the Old Man was human.

A hard effort, they'd made, to clear this port quickly, before the two ships that had gone ahead of them had had the chance to gossip or disturb the quiet atmosphere they hoped for—

But here at Voyager, thank God, they'd found no attempt to sabotage them, not by low tech or high, not even a glitch-up at the hurried negotiations, where they'd tried to hammer out financial information, and none in refueling. Just getting the signatures on documents wouldn't actually speed specific negotiations at Pell, Mariner, and Esperance, but it certainly put Voyager's vote in as favoring the new system. The Voyager stationmaster, a reserved man courting a heart attack, had looked every way he could think of for a trap or a disadvantage in what they'd almost as a matter of course come to him to offer, and instead had found nothing but good for him in the deal—so much so that they'd not only gotten his agreement and that of his administration, they'd been inundated with information handed to them on Esperance. It even included things they were dismayed to be told, dealings which the Voyager stationmaster had found out, evidently, regarding the stationmaster's affair with his wife's sister—that tidbit of information had come out
yesterday
night at dinner, before the specifics of their agreement were certain, and come out with the three merchant captains present—but only one of them had been surprised.

A stationmaster who routinely had dinner with
every
captain willing to be treated to dinner, at Voyager's best restaurant, certainly found out things.

Two bottles of wine administered in meetings like that, and the Voyager stationmaster probably found out things the captains didn't even tell their next of kin.

But last night, to them, the Voyager stationmaster had named names regarding Esperance's near bedfellowship with Union. Then the captains, at the same table, had outlined the easy operations of Esperance customs, and exactly what the contacts were by which Esperance obtained luxury goods.

And those goods shipped right past Voyager, a golden pipeline from which neither Voyager nor these captains could derive benefit. Damned right they were annoyed.

The party broke up,
Jacobite's
captain actually singing on the way down the dock, the others with their respective crews headed off, God save their livers, for
more
drinking, probably with their crews.

They had undock coming: that saved them a breakfast invitation with the station administration. They parted company with a very delighted and only slightly tipsy stationmaster, and took their security from the restaurant's kitchen, past a straggle of determined news cameras, newspeople asking such questions as:
Can you talk about the agreement? How would you characterize the agreement
?

No information was the Old Man's order. "Sorry," JR had to say, to one who tried to catch him; and he hurried to overtake the rest on their walk back to the Safe Harbor.

Madison had said, in privacy after last night's dinner, that they clearly had a worse problem ahead of them than they'd imagined, regarding Esperance, and that they might be down to using the scandal attached to the Esperance administration for outright blackmail value if things were as bad as the Voyager information intimated they were.

It had been a joke. But a thin one, even then. They had everything they wanted at three stations, and they were going to be up against profit motives with a fat, prosperous station which thought it could do whatever it pleased.

"We could turn around," Alan said when the topic came up as they were walking back. "Let Esperance hear about the deal we've made so far with Sol, Pell, Mariner and Voyager, and let them worry for a year whether they'll be included."

"Let them hear that
Sol
is in the deal," the Old Man had said, entirely seriously, as JR, walking behind with Bucklin and their security, listened in absolute quiet. "That's their source of luxury goods, in exactly the same way and through the same connections by which it's been
Mazian's
source of matériel. So Esperance is secretly talking about merchanters long-jumping from Esperance to one of the old Hinder Star ports and getting to the new point from there without Voyager, Mariner
or
Pell… becoming Union's direct pipeline to Earth. That's still a long run. And those are
big
ships that have to do that run. That's the tack we'll take with Esperance's local merchanters, and it's a true argument:
we'd
be fine, we have the engines to make it, so we're not talking in our selfish interest when we point out that the majority of merchanters couldn't do it by that route. Small ships would find themselves cut out of the trade with Earth in favor
only
of the likes of
Boreale
, run from Unionside, and I don't think our brothers and sisters of the Trade will like to hear that notion, any more than Esperance will like to hear their little scheme made public."

"If Quen has her way," Madison said, "more of
Boreale's
class will never be built. Not by Union."

"And if I have my way, we won't spend those funds building Quen's super long-haulers ourselves, either. We'll build
enough
ships to keep the stations viable and building. Bigger stations, bigger populations; bigger populations, more trade. Alliance stations will never top a planetary population, but
our
markets are totally dependent on us—unlike Cyteen's. Esperance will never grow grain and she'd get hellishly tired of fishcakes and yeast in six weeks, let alone six years. Which is what she'll be down to if we pull the merchanters together again and threaten to strike if they don't go along. We
have
them, cousins. They may think they're going to doublecross us and go direct with Earth, and they may
think
Union's new warrior-merchanters are going to be their answer, but we, and Quen, have that cut off."

The Old Man, two glasses of wine in him, was
still
sharp and dead-on, JR said to himself. It made self-interested sense even for merchanters like
Hannibal
.

"We don't want to
say
all of that," the Old Man said, "at Esperance. Not until we have Union's agreement on the line, but they're already done for, in any ambition to become the direct Union-Earth pipeline. We just have to get them to sign the document we have. Let them do it in the theory they
can
doublecross us, and get Union ships in. Those ships won't ever materialize because of
Quen's
ship, and because of
our
agreement about the tariffs. And that means Union will define its border as excluding Esperance, because
we
can give Union the security and the trade it needs far better than some backdoor agreement they might make with Esperance. They'll be left out without a tether-line. Just let drift. They don't know that yet." A moment of silence, just their footfalls on the station decking. Then the Old Man added: "In some regards, Mazian is the best friend we've got. As long as Union fears he might come back a popular hero if they push the Alliance too hard, we've got
them
, as well. Mallory wants to finish him.
I
prefer him right where he is, cousins, out in the deep dark, in whatever peace he's found."

What could you say to that? Even Francie and Alan had looked shocked.

About Madison, JR wasn't so sure.

And for himself, he feared it was the truth.