Tripoint, page 10
part #6 of Company Wars Series
"You're senior captain now. Congratulations. And a—is she your wife?"
"Nothing official. It's just not our style."
"Beatrice Perrault."
What in hell was the woman after?
Beatrice at least was safe, on duty. Christian was below, inside the ship.
"Beatrice, yes. I hear you've moved up to cargo officer. Congratulations. How do you like the work?"
"Love it. I owe you so much. My start in life. My son."
Did she know? He had no idea.
"Would you like to come aboard, Hawkins? Have a drink, discuss mutual interests?" He didn't think so. Possibly she was taping the call, for playback to authorities. He didn't expect an acceptance. "There's time before undock. You've noticed we are pulling out."
"I've noticed," Marie Hawkins said.
"So what about the drink? Apologies?"
"I don't think so."
She hung up. He shouldn't have pushed.
"Captain, we—"
"—didn't have time. Damn it, watch the frontage! If she's calling from one of the bars, we can still catch her. Haul her in, if you can do it without a fuss. Relay that."
"We're looking."
Damned crazy woman. Mischa Hawkins probably didn't know where she was, or they'd cheerfully reel her in. Sprite was on warning with station authorities, and Hawkins had sent one terse message: Call us if you have any contact with any Sprite crew. Neither of us can afford this.
Nobody'd raised hell with station offices yet about the missing son—so they hadn't figured where Thomas Hawkins was, yet. Probably they thought he was keeping company with Marie.
Which meant if they didn't find Marie, they couldn't know to the contrary; Marie probably thought her kid was with the group the cops had turned back to Sprite and told stay off the docks—Marie wasn't interested in being found, and so long as Marie stayed out of Sprite's reach, nobody was going to know Thomas was missing.
If they couldn't catch her—she was still doing Corinthian a favor, just staying out there. Best hope they had of getting out of here.
—iv—
"CHRISTIAN."
Christian cut his eyes toward the overhead and leaned his back against the wall. Where it figuratively was, already, with Austin.
"Sir."
"You stay inside the ship. That's an order, boy."
"I was just going…"
"Maxie's seeing to it. I want a double-check on the warm-hold count. Get on it."
"That's Maxie's job!"
"See to it, damn you! I'm fall up with your excuses!"
"Yes, sir," he said, and when he heard the com click out, pounded the paneling with his fist.
Saby put her head out of ops and stared.
"What?"
"What, what, Austin's what, he's on my case, is what." He stalked to the office, shoved past Saby and sat down at the console.
Punched keys. Not his favorite job. Maxie's job, and, thanks to brother Thomas and his crazy mother, no last tour on dock-side, no chance to slip back to the shop for the earrings Capella had lusted after, no chance to go back to the vid shop for the tapes he'd eyed… you didn't load up on stuff while you were on liberty, you waited till the last minute, if you didn't want to pay delivery.
Cheap cost, on this occasion.
Saby shot him a feed from her terminal. Lots and lots of boring serial numbers and clearances.
"So is anybody asking about this kid?" Saby asked.
"How would I know? Austin's not talking. Beatrice is hung over as hell and on station. Damned Family-ship prig."
"I'd be scared," Saby said. "In his place, I'd be damned scared."
"He's a Family Boy. Ship-share, all the best, don't you know. I wish I'd left him. Say he must've hid out after the fight, we wouldn't have this problem." He set the computer to scan for WH's and location, the sole intellectual function the job needed for the pass."His mother's out there looking for
Austin, Austin's hiding aboard, hauls the whole damn crew in, it's damned ridiculous. Now my half-brother's gone poking about in Miller's and we've got ourselves a problem,"
"What was he doing in Miller's?"
"Looking for his mama, what else?"
"I'd like to know what mama was looking for. It wasn't Austin."
Cousin Sabrina had a brain. Cousin Sabrina was using it. He shoved back from the console, turned the chair and looked at her, rethinking, absent temper, what Thomas Bowe-Hawkins had been doing scraping labels.
"What's her source?" he asked Saby. "Since you know so much."
"I don't know what her source is. He might."
Saby'd wiped his nose when he was a brat—till he got older and Saby had justly told him go to hell. Now he ran with Capella, Saby supered the computer techs, handled Hires, trouble-shot cargo functions at need, and took her lovers on dock-side. With all the dockside willies to choose from, she hadn't hired or slept with a psych-case yet.
Better than Austin could claim. Austin listened, when Saby said who was crazy and who wasn't.
So where did she always see that far ahead of him, damn her?
The computer came up with a Warm-Hold headed for the wrong hold, and beeped.
Damn, damn, and damn. "Who in hell checked that through? Can anybody in our crew read, or just maybe use the laser, God! I don't believe this." He punched through to the dock chief. "—Connie, Connie, do you hear? I want a number pulled off the list, fast, 987-7. Get that mother upside into warm 2 before they load it in, that's not for deep cold."
Connie took his time writing it down. Connie said they'd look for the number. Christian ran his hand through his hair and wondered how long it had been since he'd slept.
Half-brother. With a mother out there looking for Austin's hide. And a real interest in the cans.
Yeah.
Tom Hawkins knew.
"If the program finds another mis-route, handle it, will you?"
"Where are you going?—You better not go out there."
"I'm not going any damned where. It's a good question." He put in a call for Austin's office, the direct link. "Austin?"
"What's the problem?" came back, not patiently.
"Austin? My half-brother down here? Saby's got a real interesting idea. Marie Hawkins being onto something… half-brother knows how, and who, and if there's cops mixed up in it."
Silence from the office.
"So we should ask him," he said, since Austin didn't draw the conclusion.
"Are you finally figuring that out?"
"I'm not fucking stupid, sir!"
Which wasn't the brightest thing to do with Austin when Austin was looking for a fault. He heard the com cut out. He tried the re-call.
Ignored. Ignored, ignored and ignored.
"Son of a bitch!" he yelled, at no one accessible, and slammed his fist onto the console.
Connie came back on with, "I think it already went in, Chris. We got to reverse the loader to get it back."
"Get it out," he said. And when Connie came back on with, Can we wait till we're finished loading? he checked the contents, only about 50,000 credits worth of fancy liquor that didn't like freezing, and said, kindly, nicely, "No, you get the sod that passed this list, have him find two volunteers, and you have him hand-carry that mother topside through the lift."
"That's against union—"
"You carry it, Connie, or you get it carried! Those are your choices! Hear me?"
"Yessir."
He cut the connection. He sat glaring at the computer screen, and felt Saby staring at him, a rational, too-damned-superior presence prickling at his shoulder-blades.
So he wasn't reasonable. So was Austin? So was Beatrice? So was anybody in the upper end c-oh-c, reasonable? It wasn't a job requirement.
—v—
ANESTHETIC AFTEREFFECTS DIDN'T make a body feel at all good, Tom decided. He'd never had anesthetic before, assuming it was something medical and not outright illicit—but once he'd decided that he couldn't get the bracelet off, that he couldn't reach any useful switch panel and he couldn't do anything, in general, except wait, sweat, and nurse his headache, he figured he could just as well do that flat on his back on the bunk. There was a white-diamond patch on a let-down on the wall over the bunk—universal symbol for deep-space emergency supplies. He flipped it in idle curiosity and it was stocked with trank and nutri-paks. He was tempted, about the trank—just time-out and let the hours pass. But you didn't abuse the stuff. And the packs were for emergency—you left them for that. You toughed it out, that was all, though, please God, he wasn't going to need them, they'd get him out of here.
His stomach was upset, his head hurt more than the wrist did—that he was outright scared might account for a good part of the upset, but he kept trying to keep a reasonable attitude. Corinthian, in his best theory, was hanging on to him as insurance for Marie's good behavior. Corinthian didn't want him. It was going to be all right. Somehow the captains would sort it out and get Marie back and him back and Corinthian would leave Viking port before anybody got hurt.
Or Marie would figure the game, notify the cops, call the lawyers and get him out of this herself. Beat out Austin Bowe for good and all, and maybe after that, please God, get her life turned around.
Make her peace with him, and Mischa, and the universe in general.
Yeah. And Viking would reverse its spin and the sun would burn black. He couldn't even recognize the Marie that scenario would ask to exist.
Meanwhile the thump in the guts of Corinthian kept up, regular as a heartbeat. Nobody interrupted the loading, no contingent of police came looking. Wherever Marie was, she couldn't or wouldn't stop the flow of goods into Corinthian.
A man passed the cell and stopped. Tom lifted his head, stared at the man between his feet, the man looked at him as if he was a museum exhibit, and walked on. Skuzzy-looking bastard, Tom thought with a prickling of defensive instincts. Wouldn't like to meet that one on dockside, and that was walking the corridors out there.
That was the first.
Then others, not much better—older guys, a few in green coveralls: the rest in the skintights that were getting to be popular, earrings, glitz-stripes on the skin, jewelry… not a real tidy lot, he said to himself, a few of them worse than others—and with no front wall and no privacy in the cell he was sitting there for all of them to stare at.
Most did. Some laughed, as if it was funny he was there. He didn't get the point. "Well, well, well, who's this pretty thing?" a guy asked—a guy with his hair in braids, a tattoo around his neck, and so many tattoos on his bare arms he was green and purple, all snakes.
Tom stared. He would have stared on dockside. He'd not seen that many tattoos. "You want a chocolate?" the tattooed man said. He was drunk. Extremely. Others grabbed him away.
He didn't know what to think. He got to his feet and went to the bars to look after the group and see what was going on in the corridor, wondering whether that was an authorized entry or were dock-crawlers taking a drunken tour of the ship while the cargo ports were open. He heard shouts in the corridors, the usual noises of meetings and comparisons of stories, after a liberty.
Crew, he decided.
Suddenly the noises weren't friendly. He heard angry shouts, guessed from chance words he could pick up that two of the crew had had a prior set-to on dockside, and heard other voices trying to break it up, some woman yelling there were going to be officers.
"He's got a knife!" somebody yelled. Somebody hit the paneled walls, he heard the thump. And someone yelled, "Get him, get him, get him!"
Another thump, a lot of shouting. He couldn't see anything. Then:
"Damn, it's Michaels," he heard, and by everything he heard, some officer had come in on it, was asking questions, who'd started it, who'd flashed a weapon. A man got hauled off to infirmary on this Michaels' orders, and then…
Then a deal of cursing, a thump again against the paneling, and a measured, meaty thud, of something meeting flesh, not just the once or twice he thought might be justified, but it went on, and on, and on, until the screaming stopped, and something heavy hit the deck.
"Get him out of here," somebody said. The voices after that were all quiet.
He found himself with a death-grip on the bars, shivering in a cold more inside than out, and more than ever wanting out of this cell.
Not a Family ship. He'd just had a demonstration what the penalties were, and how they were dealt out. No word with the captain, nothing of the sort.
He'd thought he'd had a hard life. Now Sprite seemed a sheltered, protected existence, where Mischa's frown was a reprimand, where crew didn't carry knives against their shipmates. He'd never heard the sounds he'd just heard, out of any human being, sounds that had gone straight to his nerves, and brought a quiet over the whole ship.
He heard other traffic in the corridor and retreated from the gridwork, went back to his bunk and sat down with his back to the face of the cell, so he wouldn't have to deal with anybody. Wherever he went the cable trailed, and reminded him that even if the door opened he hadn't a chance at escaping… or putting up damn much of a fight against anybody with a key and access to the cable switch.
Ransom wouldn't work. He'd been in a place he shouldn't have been and they knew he knew, and if the station cops came asking, he didn't know what Corinthian might do, but he didn't think they were going to turn him loose to tell the police or the merchant trade at large what he'd been doing or what he'd seen and not seen.
Not if gossip was right about Corinthian's business.
Traffic came and went outside.
And it had to be board-call, Corinthian calling in its crew, even while the loading was still going on. You didn't ordinarily crowd up the ship with crew underfoot until they had something to do—unless they'd for some reason had to get off the docks.
Unless they were shortening their dock time and planning to pull out.
In which case he didn't see a thing Mischa or Marie could do about it. Station police could say Stop, and demand to search the ship, but only if they could come up with plausible evidence: a merchanter deck was the same as foreign territory, merchanters didn't allow boarders as a matter of principle, while stations depended so much on ship traffic they just wouldn't push that point unless they had very clear evidence of a customs crime.
That left him nothing to do but sit and worry at the lock. He searched the bath for anything he could use for a pick, but he couldn't find anything—there weren't any drawers, and he tried bashing it with the butt of the wall-mounted razor.
But it didn't do any good.
Just after that spate of noise-making, the loading stopped.
The whole ship sat in silence, except the rush of air in the vents.
He went to the bars again, trying to see something, anything to tell him what was going on.
Then came the unmistakable thump as the hatch sealed. A moment later the louder thump as the lines closed down and detached, and a siren sounded throughout the ship, no word from the captain, just that lonely, warning sound that said hazard, hazard, take stations, the ship is moving.
It was a nightmare. The misjudgment. The mistakes he'd made, that led this direction, step by step. Thinking that he'd win Marie's… acceptance, if no more than that. He'd gambled his safety. Thought he might win Marie's acceptance—and her sanity. And he'd lost.
He hoped Marie was free, and safe. He hoped nobody had gotten hurt on his account.
But it was decidedly time to sit down and take hold. Which he did, with a lump gathering in his throat. He located the safety restraints on the bunk and sat down, cross-legged, not expecting but a short zero g, and a gentle shove, not worth belting in for.
It was far more than a gentle shove. He grabbed the frame of the bunk and the safety hold on the wall, and braced his feet, one on the deck and one on the mattress—thinking he'd just made a serious mistake.
He didn't know how long the acceleration was going to last. He dared not let go the handholds he had to get the safety restraints fastened. His heart was going doubletime.
He didn't like the ship putting out like that. He didn't like a pilot who skirted the regs and a bridge that didn't warn people when they were moving.
It struck him then that there couldn't be kids or seniors aboard. It just wasn't, wasn't, wasn't a Family ship, never mistake it again, and if he didn't lose his grip and break his neck during launch, he'd be luckier than he deserved for trusting anything about it.
They went inertial then, a moment of float, and he snatched the restraints across and jammed the first and the second clip shut with shaking hands.
After that he lay flat on his back and felt the stomach-jolting g-shifts of maneuver of a ship that didn't care about crew comfort, and didn't engage the ring for crew safety, or warn anyone beyond sounding the siren.
In a hurry to leave and doing a show-off bit of maneuvering, he could read it—screw you all, the pilot was saying to Sprite, and to Viking, and maybe to all civilized places, maybe just because Austin Bowe was pissed, who knew?
Chapter Four
—i—
"MARIE."
Depend on it. Saja found her. Turned up at her elbow in the Trade Bureau offices, all concern, all indignation.
Marie keyed up another file in the Financial Access section, downloaded it… they said a ship at Viking Free Port had open access to the trade records. Translation: they let you look. If you understood the software and knew what files might be significant, good luck, you had a chance, but the too-damned-helpful system wanted to pre-digest the reports for you if you got into the market area, not give you access to the raw data, and that was a piece of computer cheek.
So Corinthian had pulled out. Spooked out, left, maybe to change its whole pattern, her worst fear, and she was not in a mood to be lectured to by Family.
Maybe, with luck, and substantial evidence, she could get the cops into Miller's warehouse.
