Finity's End - a Union-Alliance Novel (64 page)

Wanting all the witnesses they could get.

The wind began to wail again. They were opening that door behind them. A shot rang out, hitting what, he didn't wait to see.

There was a free-standing block of shops at a right angle to the warehouse frontage. He dragged Jeremy around the corner, in among spacers window-shopping and bar-hopping, ran through, startled outcries in their wake.

Gunshots came from behind them. There were outcries, outrage, panic. He kept running, dodged among passersby diving for cover.

"Stop!" someone yelled, and they didn't stop. Then Jeremy knocked someone down and fell, himself, twisting in Fletcher's grip as Fletcher tried to get him on his feet and keep going.

"What's going on," spacers around them demanded.

"
Finity's End
!" was all Fletcher could say, trying to hold a winded kid on his feet. "Somebody call our ship!" He tried to run on, but the pain in his side was all but overwhelming. Hands were helping him now, and he pulled Jeremy with him, hearing the sounds of resistance behind him, shouts and curses around the gunfire. There was nothing to say, no wind to say it with. He just took Jeremy the direction open to him, vision too jarred and blurred to know where he was going until he hit someone else and that someone grabbed him.

"Fletcher!"

Chad
.
Chad
and Nike and Toby.

"The whole ship's looking for you!"
Chad
yelled at him.

"Guys after us," he tried to say, but about that time something sailed past their heads and rebounded off a pressure window,
bang
!

Fletcher ducked into the door-recess of a shop, nearest refuge, got down with arms across Jeremy, and
Chad
and Nike came in, flung themselves down as a barricade as all hell broke loose outside. Others spotted their shelter, younger crew, not
Finity
juniors, not even all of the same ship, but just at that moment a pressure window exploded right across the aisle of shop fronts.

"They're shooting!" Nike cried.

Chains were out of pockets among the spacers and people were yelling. Jeremy's head came up and Fletcher shoved it down again. He was shaking. He'd seen riot break out. He saw this one. People with no idea what the fight was were arming themselves, spacers aiming at whatever spacers had at issue.

Like stationers with guns.

"The whole damn
dock
!"
Chad
said between his teeth. "God, Fletcher. How'd you manage this one?"

"They're trying to kill us!" Jeremy said indignantly.

Then
the police showed up, a lot of police, with stunners they were using indiscriminately; and chains swung. Fletcher grabbed an indiscriminate armful of spacer kids and shoved heads down as a flung missile sailed past their refuge.

Nike risked her skull to reach up and try to shove the shop door open. It was locked, people inside with the door barred. She slammed the door with her fist, yelling, "We got
kids
, you damn fools! Open the door!"

Riot spilled past them, police literally stumbling into their shallow shelter, being pushed there by the crowd, driven in retreat by chain-swinging spacers. Someone stepped on Fletcher's leg and a chain cracked against the window over their heads.

Then to a shout of "There they are!" silver-suits showed up.

Bucklin reached them, Bucklin, Wayne, and a handful of
Finity
seniors, creating a barrier between them and the fight.

"Hold it!" Fletcher heard someone shout, then, a voice that hit nerves and stopped bodies in mid-impulse, and he knew that voice… he
thought
he knew it. "We've got
kids
here! Hold it, hold it,
stop right there, you
!"

JR. And
Finity
personnel. And when JR used that voice, bodies obeyed while minds were thinking it over. Fletcher's own nerves had jumped. Now he just caught his breath and waited for the missiles to stop.

But in the fading of riot around them,
Chad
and Nike got up. Toby did. Fletcher let Jeremy and the kids up, then, and hauled himself to his feet, with an ankle swollen tight against his boot.

"Hold it!" a voice yelled. The police advanced on the small collection they made, police, with stunners.

"Hold it!" JR said, interposing himself, and Bucklin and the other
Finity
personnel were right beside him. "Just back off," JR said to the Esperance police, and chains might have disappeared into pockets or trash cans, but the weapons were still there, Fletcher was sure of it. The police were armed, and there were nerve-jolted spacers down from the last encounter.

"Who are you?" The age-old police voice.

"Captain James Neihart, merchanter
Finity's End
, and those are
kids
, here. Nobody's pulling a weapon on our personnel."

"
Rose's
kids, too," a spacer said, and came in close, "Damned if you wave a weapon near
Rose's
juniors, mister. Just stow it"

"Get out of there," the lead officer said, and two of the kids who'd run in for shelter scrambled up and walked over to the man who spoke for
Scottish Rose
.

A lot more spacers had gathered, most in civvies,
Finity
personnel among them. The police were increasingly outnumbered, and calling for reinforcements. Fletcher heard the crackle of communications.

"Break it up," the lead cop said, and Jeremy yelled: "Those guys back there's trying to kill us!" And to JR: "This shop had the stick, sir! It's back there in the shop! There's guys chasing us."

"Not now," a spacer said with chilling finality.

"We have a breach in the maintenance system," the chief of the police said. "We have windows broken. We have—"

"They
shot
at us!" Jeremy cried indignantly. "They were firing shots all over!"

"Jeremy found stolen property in a shop," Fletcher said. "I went in to get Jeremy, and they took us both into the tunnels."

"
You're
responsible," the policeman said.

"We ran," Fletcher said. " We weren't the ones with the guns."

"You're under arrest," the cop said.

"No," JR said, and stepped between. So did Bucklin. In two blinks a wall of
Finity
officers and assorted spacers had interposed themselves, blocking the police from action.

"We've had a breach of the tunnels," the police objected.

"We have larceny of
Finity
property and assault against underage crew," JR said.

"Where's your ID?" the policeman asked. "You're not wearing any insignia. How do we know who you are?"

"See the black patch?" a spacer said, not even theirs. "That's
Finity
. He says he's a captain, mister, you get out of his way."

A policeman was using his clip-com. An electronic voice gave orders.

"We've got an impasse here," JR said. "And it's not going to budge. You can try to arrest a handful of kids, which is not going to happen. On the other hand, you can walk back to the five hundreds and take a look at Arnason Imports. And you can start with treaty violation, which is a little out of your territory, but I can guarantee Stationmaster Oser-Hayes will want all the information and evidence he can get. I can add traffic in illicit goods, handling stolen property, and all the way up to attempted murder.
Finity's End
is sovereign territory, gentlemen, and we don't surrender our personnel, but we'll be happy to file complaints and sign affidavits."

There was a muttering among the spacers, silence among the police. Fletcher kept right beside Jeremy. It wasn't a time to say anything. But there was also a human being he'd shoved off a ledge. While they were accounting for things—he might have killed somebody.

"The tunnel passages behind the import shop," Fletcher said very quietly. And the instincts of his younger years wanted to claim the man had slipped on the catwalks and that a shove had had nothing to do with it, but
Finity
had old-fashioned standards. "He was after us and I shoved him. Somebody needs to find him." He added, because he knew damage to those tunnel lines was dangerous. "Somebody needs to search the place. There's got to be lines hit. They were shooting left and right."

"We'll want a statement."

"
Our command
will file a complaint in their name," JR said. "Meanwhile they're complaining of stolen goods at Arnason's and we're filing charges right now. You want a statement,
I'll
give you a statement. We want an immediate search of the premises. I can assure you there'll be a warrant. Our legal office will be contacting your legal office in short order, and I'd suggest the Stationmaster may want answers from inside that shop."

The police were dubious.

"You get in there or we will," a spacer said. "They take
spacer
property in there, we'll go in after it"

And weakening. "We need a complaint and a warrant."

"You've got a complaint. Your warrant should be in progress."

A new group showed up. With a lot of silver hair involved. A lot of flash uniforms.

Ship's officers. A lot of them, Fletcher thought. He saw Captain James Robert at the head of it.
Madison
.

There was a muttering of amazement among the spacers. The station cops didn't initially, perhaps, know what they were facing.

"I'd say hurry with that warrant," JR said.

Oser-Hayes hadn't wanted a general meeting, involving the ships' captains… yet.

He had one.

JR settled at the end of the
Finity
delegation, knowing each and every face at the meeting, this time, every captain that had been at that convocation, every station officer that had been at the court.

There was a notable exception:
Champlain
was in the process of leaving Esperance. The station wouldn't—legally couldn't—prosecute a spacer whose captain chose to defend him, but they wouldn't allow that ship to dock, either.

Wayne
poured water. Bucklin was standing watch at the door.

JR sat easily, cheerful in the foreknowledge of the captains' agreement to the terms of the Pell agreement. He sat easily as the Old Man with perfect self-assurance laid the hisa stick on the white table-cloth… a weathered, battered stick worth far more than the statuary outside or the furnishings of the room.

In this case it was worth
Champlain's
reputation,
Finity's
vindication, and a serious example of the Esperance administration's mounting legal problems. There were rumblings of discontent with Oser-Hayes' administration on a great many fronts, not only among spacers who'd broken up a little of the docks in the general discontent, but among stationers who'd known bribes were being passed to let certain businesses run wide open and in contravention of the law.

And others, who'd known there was something not too savory operating in the courts, the customs offices, the police department, and the tax commission. Name it, and somewhere, somehow, money had opened and shut doors on Esperance.

Nothing had ever united all the offended elements before. Now Oser-Hayes hoped there
wouldn't
be a vote of confidence… before they could get the Pell trade agreement finalized.

No, the police had not opposed a unified gathering of ship's captains, officers of the Merchanters' Alliance, and a warrant had fairly
flown
out of the judge's office, enabling a very interesting search of Arnason Imports and a series of arrests of Arnason owners anxious to prove they weren't the only company engaged in illicit trade.

The station news service and the trendy coffee shops were abuzz with official reports and delicious unofficial rumor.

They had an entire smuggling network exposed, not a harmless one, but a conduit for stolen goods reaching all sorts of places… stolen artwork, artifacts, weapons, rejuv and pharmaceuticals including biologicals. Esperance had had something for everyone—including war surplus arms that were listed as recyclables. What they'd found in two weeks at Esperance was a veritable black-market treasure trove… and what they'd dismantled
wasn't
going to be back in operation the moment the current set of merchanters pulled out.

Finity's End
had an agreement with its brother merchanters to pass the word, the total files, the archives on Esperance, and for one ship to stay in dock until it had gotten agreements from the next ship to arrive that
it
would linger at Esperance dock—free of excess charges, of course—to pass the word in turn.

In short, there was a great deal of shakeout in a very short time, a pace of change that stationers found stunningly fast, but that spacers, accustomed to arrange their affairs in two-week bursts of diplomacy, during docking, found completely reasonable.

Yes, Oser-Hayes would have liked a four-, six-week delay. Oser-Hayes would have spun things out for months and years if it had involved station law, with injunctions, stays, postponements, court orders and all manner of tactics.

Not with the
Alliance
legal system on a two-week push.

And amid all the smooth textures and simple pearl gray and black of a modern conference room, amid all the modern flash and glitter of spacers and the smooth, expensive fashion of the stationmaster and his aides… a thing indisputably organic, hard-used, hand-made of substances mysterious to space-dwellers. Simple things, Fletcher had said, who'd been on a world. Wood. Feather. Fiber.

Small, planet-made miracles.

"This," Captain James Robert said, with his hand on the hisa artifact, "this is the artifact that led us to the problem. Not very large. Not very elaborate. But important to one of my crew. It was a gift from Satin…
Tam-utsa-pitan
is her name, in her language. But Satin… to us humans.
She
sent it. A wish for peace. That's what we've come here to find, if you please.

"And in that sense," the Old Man said, "more than humans sit at this table. Understand: we never could explain the War to the hisa, when the one who sent this asked what it all meant. Peace may be an easier concept for them. Hard for
us
to find. But, courtesy of the
Finity
crewman who lent this to our conference, consider this the living witness of the other intelligent species swept up in the events of our time. It'll lie here, while we try to find an answer and sign a simple piece of paper that can clear reputations—"

Oh,
watch
Oser-Hayes' expression when the Old Man held out that possibility: restoration, amnesty. A cleared name and a new chance to be immaculate. Damn sure Oser-Hayes knew the details of all the operations that had ever run. There might be nobody better to clean them up than a newly empowered convert to economic orthodoxy.

"Meanwhile," the Old Man said with a deep, assured calm, that voice that took the tumbling emotions of a situation and settled things to quiet, "meanwhile an old hisa's sitting beneath her sky waiting for that answer. And her peace is that much closer, in this place. I think we'll find it this time—at least among ourselves."