Tripoint, page 26
part #6 of Company Wars Series
Silence came like a stop in the universe. He stood, hard-breathing, dizzy, with one hand where not-dancing made it too familiar, and the other sweating in Saby's grasp. Everybody applauded, the band got a second wind, and while some drifted back to the tables, Saby said it was a slow tune and she'd teach him that step, too.
It wasn't so organized as the fast step, just kind of wandering back and forth, no way for anybody to be conspicuous, the stars there beyond the shadows of other couples, Saby's body brushing his on a regular sort of movement that he… didn't really mind. Much. Often. He was wary. He asked himself if he was being seduced, or if she was—taking a stupid chance, if that was what was happening. But if Saby wanted to end this up with bed, he could agree with that, he'd been clever as long as he could, and stupid was taking over with a vengeance.
Wasn't his fault. Wasn't any way out of the trap he was in. Might as well enjoy anything that came before. There was, tomorrow, inevitably the day after. And Austin.
The dance ended.
"Want to sit?" Saby asked.
"What do you want?"
"Want to dance," Saby said. So they did, a fast one this time. He remembered. Saby floated in his arms, threw changes and embellishments into the steps and the turns he couldn't match—she was gorgeous. The light of magnified stars sparked on cut-away sleeves that fluttered against her and away again, her hair eclipsed the light like a swirl of shadow—he kept up with her, he took her cues, and when the music was done, she laughed, breathless, and applauded, dragged him back to the table when the music was done.
Two fresh drinks were sitting there. He didn't think that was a good idea. He sipped at his, out of breath, himself, with far less work, and she sipped at hers, the same, until they'd both caught their breaths and cured the dry mouths.
The music had settled to a saner pace. "Go again?" Saby asked.
"Sure," he said. He hadn't had all his drink. He wanted water, but the waiter was invisible, and Saby was happy… a yes could do that, it was easy, and it wasn't with most people in his experience—a new experience, she was, no negatives, hell, you could get too easy, you could get to like making Saby happy. So here he was, going out onto the floor, for one dance and then two, slow and sane dancing, just wandering back and forth. Saby leaned her head on his shoulder, and body moved against body, her instigation: he didn't want her complaining tomorrow, telling her crewmates and her captain he'd had the ideas and she hadn't.
Because maybe it wasn't a come-ahead. He couldn't figure, and all the higher brain managed was a warn-off, a wait-see. Brain-base was on slow ignite, and feedback from the lower body circuits was hitting warning, warning…
Music faded. Applause and sort-out was a reprieve. They stared at each other in the giddy dark and… he wasn't sure whose initial motion it was… joined the drift back to tables and drinks.
They rested, they got at least the moisture in the drinks—he wanted water, Saby said she did, and they tried to catch a waiter, but the next dance was starting. They danced some more, the drinks kept refilling every time they got back to the table, and by then they were immortal and impervious to successive rounds. They danced, they drank, they danced until the stars were blurry, until, in the ending of a slow number, while they moved in a slow, brain-buzzed drift, the speakers announced shift-change, and last call.
They got their breath. The waiter showed, with the reckoning. He didn't dare to ask.
"Tab us to Corinthian, " Saby said, and showed her passport. "House percentage.—And bring some water, please."
They never got any water, just sips of the last refill. And the receipt and a chocolate.
—v—
SO THE SECOND CHIEF NAVIGATOR wanted to board and talk. Capella had to pass on an urgent piece of news. Capella had to talk to him. Of course Christian wasn't in the vicinity.
Like bloody hell, Austin thought, and it didn't take a master intellect, once Capella showed at the lock, to predict it had to do with the dustup on the dock, that the dustup had a lot to do with Christian asking extra security outside, and had a damned lot to do with Christian's scouring around and making more noise on the information market than Corinthian habitually liked.
Which, logic argued, might just drop a small amount of fault for the situation on the captain's own plate, for not yanking Christian's authorizations and codes before they docked, but, hell, he expected at least eighteen years worth of maturity out of the twenty ship-years the kid had lived, he expected a degree of basic sense of consequences, and he wouldn't have sneaked Hawkins out the lock, or involved Christophe Martin, which was the start of the whole info-blowup. It could have racketed clear to the stationmaster's office if he hadn't put a fast brake on it. Right now he could wring the young fool's neck, Christian knew it, and damned right Capella came alone, soft-footing it into lower main, trading on her connections. You got a Fleet navigator on quasi-permanent loan, all right, but you consequently had to ask yourself what that individual could and would do if you came to cross-purposes, and you had to ask yourself a second time, when said individual immediately locked on to your admittedly attractive mainday chief officer-and-offspring, whether it was wholly as physical an attraction as Christian's young ego could assume it was. Warn him, yes. Repeated warnings. Like pouring current into a non-conductor. Of course Christian knew all that, Christian knew everything, Capella was just a good time. Capella was intelligent, Capella was good conversation.
Capella screwed his brains into overload and Christian had revelatory insights, oh, damned right he did.
Heredity didn't warn him at all. Paternal experience was irrelevant. The wages of sin walked down the corridor and arrived face to face.
"Sir," Capella said. "There's a spotter for somebody out there. Guy named Patrick, that's all I know."
"The hell that's all you know. " Worst-case became, in a single, disastrous instant, the present case, and you didn't know how far it had proliferated: but Capella if not Christian knew why she'd asked for a hearing—knew she'd let a situation slip over a line past-which-not, by this unaccustomed and stark quiet of manner.
"Can we talk, sir?"
"We can talk," he said. And maybe he should run scared of her connections, but hell if he was going to. "Do I assume somebody's screwed up? Do I assume this involves your solution to the problem?"
No bluff. No flinch. An arrogant stare. "If I could have caught him, yessir, I should've done, but I couldn't account for the four with him and I didn't want the cops."
"So what's your recommendation?"
"Lie in port. It's not a sure bet Sprite's coming in. It is a fact that that something's already here."
"Who? What?"
Forget getting all the truth out of Capella. It took her a couple of beats to censor. Or lie.
"Renegade. Scavenger. Little stuff. No threat to us. But he'll track us. He'll find the dump. He'll kill us if he can… to shut me up."
"I can understand that motivation."
Capella's chin came up, eyes a clear try-me, and he gave it back:
"You are an arrogant sumbitch. My son's just a good lay, is he? Good boy, a little dim, do anything you like on his watch? Or did he scare you into this?"
Long, long silence in the corridor, and Capella's nostrils flared.
"Didn't think it would go this far."
"Yeah."
"Yes, sir, I fucked up. I considerably fucked up."
He let the silence hang there. He'd never been sure what captain or what interests Capella served. But it was down to basics, now. When something threatened the ship you were on… it was suddenly damned basic; and he let that admission hang there long enough for Capella to hear it herself.
"But in some measure," he said ever so quietly, so she would hear it, "your friends are something we can deal with outside Pell system. In some measure, you're up to that, aren't you?" He'd never challenged how she handled navigation, or her other faculties. It was the closest pass he intended to make to that touchy matter. He challenged her nerve. And her skill. And waited for his answer.
"I think—" she began to equivocate. It wasn't ordinary for her.
"I know," he said, cutting her off. "I know. Period. If Sprite gets here, what action do you suggest, second chief navigator, to prevent a search of our records?"
"It's our deck, sir."
"That's fine. We can lose docking privileges pending our release of those records. This isn't the War, second chief navigator. We may be necessary to the Fleet, but our little hauling capacity isn't necessary to Pell Station, and our brother and sister merchanters aren't just apt to rally round Corinthian in a quarrel with other merchanters, does that occur to you, second chief navigator?"
A Fleet navigator wasn't an entity to piss off. You agreed to take on the inevitable Gift from the Fleet and you agreed not to ask questions; you agreed that was grounds for very severe action in certain quarters. In effect, you took a ticking bomb aboard, and you hoped to hell nothing ever set it off: there was nothing but Capella's personal inclinations and physical restraint to keep said navigator from walking out on that dock, finding this Patrick, and turning coat in five minutes. It was a hell of a chance to take.
But it had gotten, thanks to Capella and Christian and Marie Hawkins, down to a similar hell of an alternative.
"Yes, sir," Capella said, equally quietly, "it does occur to me. But if we don't get Hawkins back… we're still screwed, no matter whether Sprite comes in here or not, which isn't proven they will, sir, that's my thought."
"I am so glad, I am so very glad we agree on that, second chief. But take it from me that we are going to board call tomorrow on schedule, that this is the course we're taking, and that, while I have thought of spacing Christian, I expect his ass in that airlock, safe, sober, and in your company. After that, I expect your professional talents to be on, period, capital letter, On. Can we agree on this, second chief?"
No blink, just analysis, like the face she wore on the bridge.
"Yes, sir," she said.
"Good. That's real good. Because I appreciate the seriousness of what's happened out there. And I value officers who do. Ahead of my son, at this moment. Do you copy that?"
"Yes, sir."
"That's all, then."
Capella nodded a courtesy, turned with a touch more precision than the habit of the crew, and walked… you could see the military in the backbone, the way you could see her move around her station on the bridge, economy of everything.
Damn-all worst woman in the available universe for Christian to take to bed. Marie Hawkins was safer. Much.
He'd said, just now,—he was sure Capella had heard him: Choose a side. Get the hell to them, or take orders from me.
It remained to see, it did, how much she'd fill Christian in—how much she'd dare fill Christian in, if she meant to stay on Corinthian—because Christian wasn't going to be an automatic choice to succeed to the captaincy, not now, not since Viking, and damned well not since the stunt he'd pulled here… was still pulling, staying clear of him, not coming in to report, himself. There were times to revise priorities, there were times to be sure messages got through… you didn't hand off to a bedmate not even remotely connected to the crew, if Christian had even made the decision that brought Capella in to report what couldn't go over com.
He didn't take it for a given. Not now. Not any longer. And that touched a personal investment he hadn't thought he had in Beatrice's unasked-for offspring. It affected him. It made him personally, painfully angry.
He stood there, asking himself why he gave a damn, and since when.
—vi—
LONG TRIP THROUGH THE LIFT system, alone for some of the trip, but they didn't talk—too many drinks, probably, Tom decided, a headache coming.
And an inevitable reckoning, tomorrow, the prospect of which, now that the music had died, and Saby's manner had gone remote and still, didn't sustain the mood for bed-sharing. He wasn't up to intricate personal politics. He wished he was gone enough to skip the excuses and the assurances, just to go face-down and maybe get some sleep that might, in the face of a not very pleasant tomorrow, desert him all too easily.
They reached the Aldebaran's doors. Saby screwed the access code twice, couldn't find her manual key card, and swore, going through all her pockets.
"I'm sorry," she kept saying. "Damn."
"It's all right," he found himself saying. "Maybe we could phone Corinthian's board. " It could only, he told himself, mean a shorter station stay. "Central'd have to put us through."
"Oh, hell," Saby said. "No. Let me think. It's eight-six-one…"
"Five?" He'd watched her code it a dozen times. "It's not bottom row."
"Eight-six-one… You're screwing me up. Eight-six, eight-six, eight-six—"
"Five."
"It's not five."
"Eight-six-five-one—"
"Two-one. Eight-six-two-one-nine-nine-one. " Saby leaned on the wall and coded it into the pad. The light turned green, the latch opened, they were in, and the same code worked all the way to the room.
The card, figure it, was on the table. Right by the door.
"Damn," Saby said, and took it and put it in the coveralls she probably was going to wear tomorrow. She looked tired and out of sorts, and went to the bath and ran one ice-water. And a second one.
"Cheers," she said, bringing him his.
He was sitting on his bed. She was standing. They drank the ice-water they hadn't gotten. Saby laughed, then, tired-sounding.
"What's funny?"
"Nothing," she said. "Just a thought."
"Fools that trust Corinthians?"
A frown. "No."
Sexual tension was gone, no echoes but a remote regret it hadn't, couldn't, have lasted. Maybe, he thought, that was her rueful laughter. He asked, cool and curious, "—Were you supposed to seduce me?"
"No. Not. Nada. " She squatted down, peered up at his face, bleary-eyed herself, and shook at his knee, an attention-getting. "Tom, it's going to be all right. Believe me."
"Yeah.—Truth. Who really got the tab tonight?"
"The captain. Cross my heart. " She did. Almost fell on her rear. She didn't look like a conspirator.
"What? Fatherly generosity?"
"Christian shouldn't have done what he did. That's all. " She patted his knee and got up, turned out the light, then, before she wobbled over to her bed and threw back the covers, evidently at the limits of her sobriety. They never had gotten undressed together—just took the boots off. Shared a room. She sat down in the night-light and kicked her flimsy shoes off, one foot and the other—he shoved his own off and hauled back his sheets. Horizontal for eight hours seemed very attractive right now.
So, with regret, did the woman crawling into covers. Pretty backside, when he looked that direction. Pretty rest of her. Not highly coordinated, getting her blanket over her fully-dressed rump.
"Damn nice guy, Tom. You are. Wish you were just a little, little bit not so nice."
God, now, now, she invited him, when his skull had started to fog from the inside and the rest of him hadn't a desire for anything but face down in the pillow.
But, hell, Bed Manners, his Polly spacer used to say, and taught him ways at least to see she got to sleep.
So he hauled himself up off the mattress, came over to sit on her bed. She hadn't left much room at the edge and she was fading, but he'd made the trip—he took her hand in his—pretty hand, limp hand. Fingers twitched. Eyes opened.
He leaned over and kissed her mostly on the mouth. Her fingers twitched again. He figured he'd done his bit for politeness and told himself bed was waiting on the other side of the room, but… but she was so damn pretty, she was so damn crazy, he just sat, her hand in his, thinking how with his Polly girl you didn't need much to figure what she was thinking.
But with Saby… with Saby…
Hell, he thought. He was physically attracted, he was in the mood and now she was zeroed out.
He shifted down to the end of the bed, not too gently, hoping to rouse a little attention by quasi-accident. Didn't work. He wanted her. Still. And worse. He grabbed her ankle under the blanket. Shook her foot. Hard.
Not a twitch. He sat there a moment, thinking it was a hell of a thing to do to a guy.
But if he woke her out of this sound a sleep she was going to come out of it mad.
Which wasn't the reaction he wanted.
The bed was wide enough. It was the last night before board-call, and he didn't think he was going to sleep, now, he was just going to lie there, wide awake, and worry.
But hell, too, if he was going to turn up in somebody's bed uninvited. There was a rude word for that. So he got up and headed for the bath and a—he glanced at the clock—an 0558 hours shower.
"Tom."
Now she was awake. She sat up on an elbow. The glitz blouse sparked blue in the night-light. "You want to?"
"Want to, what?" He was in a mood to be difficult. Now she wasn't. She reached out a glitter-patterned arm, a mottling of shadow and light.
"Do it, you know."
"Were you asleep?"
"No," she said, to his surge of temper. "Curious."
"Curious, hell! I'm not interested!"
"I've got a ship to protect!"
Loose logic always threw him. He got as far as the bathroom door. And stopped. And looked back.
"From what? From me? I'm not the one walking the corridors in the deep dark, thanks, I've been screwed, or something like it, by one of your night-walking shipmates, and nobody asked my permission."
"Shit," Saby said, and sat upright. "You're kidding."
"It's no damn joke. I'm not flattered.—I prefer to be awake, thank you, the same courtesy I give anybody else."
"Shit, shit, shit. " It was dismay he heard. Saby got out of bed. " 'Scuse me. It's not me that did it. I know who. Damn her. I'm sorry."
That was fine. So it wasn't Saby crawling the corridors. He never had thought so. And he didn't need the shower, now, but he wasn't inclined to sleep, now, any time soon, and the bath was an excuse not to deal with Saby.
