Tripoint, page 8
part #6 of Company Wars Series
Saw a sign, not a big one. Hercules Shipping. Commercial district. And warehouses. The character of the zone changed that quickly. Suddenly it was all warehouses, some with open doors, cans standing inside in the light, most with doors shut.
Transshippers, Marie had said. Couldn't remember the name or the number, until he saw the sign.
Miller.
Miller Transshipping.
The doors weren't open. Looked closed, except shippers didn't ever close. No neon about the sign, easy to miss, on the frontage like that, with no lights. But Miller was the name, he was sure of it.
He tried the personnel entry, heavy door with no window. It was supposed to work on hydraulics, but it didn't, you had to shove it after the electric motor took it halfway, and it wasn't illegal to walk into an office and ask directions to some place: he could pretend he didn't know where Hercules Shipping was, he had his story all ready.
But nobody was in the office. The side door wasn't locked, either, and that led into the lighted warehouse.
Going there was a little chancier, but he could still say he was lost and looking for somebody… please God the vacancy in the office wasn't because Marie had done something, like killing somebody.
He was lost, he'd tell them, if he ran into workers inside. He'd gotten separated from his crewmates in the transport crush, he didn't know where he was.
He walked among tall shipping canisters, cold-hauler stuff, up in racks, like a ship's hold, only more brightly lit. The cans drank up heat from the air, made the whole warehouse bitter cold. They were covered in frost.
The rack-loader had stopped with a can aboard. It was frosted as the rest. He undipped his ID, used the edge to scrape the plate to find out what was listed in it… Marie wanted to know, and he wanted to be able to tell her. Prove he was on her side.
It said the origin was Pell. It said… he couldn't make out the contents, the label was faint and the plate kept frosting over again while he scraped thick greyed peels of ice off it, but it said it was cold-hold stuff, it said it was biologic, that was a check-box. It said food-stuffs. He was freezing where he stood, hadn't realized it was cold-hold goods filling the warehouse. He needed more than the insulated coveralls you used on the docks. Needed gloves, because his fingers were burning just peeling the frost off, and the can drank the heat out of his exposed skin, out of his eyes, so he didn't dare go on looking at it. Deep cold was treacherous: if you felt it do that and you didn't have a face-mask, you needed to get out.
A door opened behind him. His heart thumped. He heard voices, decided he'd better go ahead with his charade. So he clipped his ID back to his pocket and walked out to see who'd come in, to give his story about being lost.
Personnel came in wearing heavy coats, in gloves; then a handful of spacers in no more protection than he stood in—in the same green he'd seen on Corinthian crew.
He decided to bluff it through, giddy and shivering as he was. "There you are," he declared. "I was wondering if there was someone in charge."
"What in hell are you doing in here?"
"Door was open," he said, walking toward them, scared as hell and trying not to show it. "Sorry. I thought there'd be somebody in the warehouse, if nothing else. " He didn't want Corinthian crew to see the patch on his sleeve, please God, he just wanted to deal with the warehouse owners. "Lost my mates, got off at the wrong stop… I was supposed to go down to Hercules Shipping, I forgot the damn number…"
"He was with her," one of the spacers said.
Shit, he thought, desperate, and made a throwaway gesture, measuring the distance to the door. "I was with my crew, except I got off too soon. Sorry if I've inconvenienced anybody, I was just looking for a number…"
His legs were stiff from the cold. He wasn't sure he could run with any speed. The spacers came closer, the warehouse workers saying things about the dangers of cold cans, about not wanting any trouble on their premises.
Fine, he thought, he'd go through them, not the spacers. And he bolted for the door.
But the warehousers grabbed him, all the same, and swung him around to face the spacers. Six of them.
"Sprite crew," one of them said, and the young man who looked like an officer of some sort said, "Looking for an address, are you?" The young man walked up and undipped the ID from his pocket. Looked at it.
Clean-cut young officer. Stripes on his sleeve. Didn't look like as much trouble as the crew might be. Looked at the ID. Looked at him.
"Thomas Bowe-Hawkins."
Bowe, the pocket tab on the officer said. C. Bowe. Cousin of his, he thought, and didn't welcome the acquaintance.
"Well, well, well," the young man said. "Marie Hawkins' darling offspring. Search the place."
"She's not here."
The Corinthian clipped the tab back to his pocket, one-handed. Straightened his collar, a familiarity he didn't like.
"Thomas. Or Tom?"
"Suit yourself," he muttered. He was scared. He'd been in cousin-traps a hundred times. But there were a dozen ways to get killed in this one.
"Tommy Hawkins. I'm Christian Bowe. Papa's other son."
Other son.
More than possible. He hadn't known, he hadn't guessed, and he looked at this Christian Bowe, wondering whether kinship was going to get him out of this or see him dead.
"Where's your mama?" Christian Bowe asked him. "Hmmn?"
"I don't know. She's not here."
"So you just went walking in the warehouses, did you? Looking for something in particular?"
"I know Miller's handling your stuff. I thought she might have come here. But she didn't."
"Come here for what?"
He didn't answer. One of the men came back from a circuit of the area. "He was scraping at the labels, " that man said. "Or somebody was."
"Marie Hawkins?" Christian shouted at the empty air. The voice echoed around the vast, cold warehouse, up among the racks. "You want your kid back?"
Marie didn't, Tom thought. Not that much.
Or maybe not at all. Echoes died into silence. He stood there, with two men holding on to his arms, and hands and face numb with the cold. Eyes were frosting around the edges, the stiffness of ice.
"He knows too much," somebody said, at his back.
"Don't know a thing," he said.
"The hell," Christian said, and turned his shoulder, hand rubbing the back of his neck, while he thought over what to do, Tom supposed, while all of them froze, but he was getting there faster.
"Put him out," Christian said then. He thought he meant out of the warehouse, and hoped, when the man holding his right arm quit twisting it.
But that man's hand came around and under his jaw, then. He knew the hold, tried to break it before it cut the blood to his brain, but he didn't have the leverage, they did, and the white suns in the overhead dimmed and faded out, quite painlessly.
—v—
DIDN'T KNOW WHERE HE WAS, then, except face down on the icy deck with a knee in his back, pressing his forehead against the burning cold of the decking. They taped his hands and ankles together. He yelled for help, and somebody ripped off some more tape and taped his mouth with it—after which, they threw some kind of cold blanket over him and rolled him in it, until he was a cocoon. He tried to kick and tried to yell out, figuring their beating him unconscious was no worse than smothering to death or freezing to death in the warehouse, if there was anybody to know.
But they picked him up, then, head and feet, and earned him a distance, through a doorway, he thought, before they dumped him on the deck. It was the office, he gradually decided, because he could feel the warmth in the air that got through the blanket, which was a source of cold, now, instead of warmth.
He heard them walking around him, talking about the transport rolling, how it had been down; he heard them cursing somebody named Jeff and wishing he'd hurry, but he hoped for maybe one of the company owners or a customer to come in, who'd be willing to call the cops and canny enough to get out the door. Now and again he gathered his forces to try to make noise in case somebody was in earshot, and they'd kick him half-heartedly, not with any force through the blanket, and once they told him they'd beat hell out of him if he didn't lie still.
Somebody did come in, just after that; he heard the door open and close; but it was the guy named Jeff, who said he'd got the stuff, that was all. He didn't know what they were talking about; but abruptly they grabbed him, unwrapped the blanket, unfastened his collar and shot him with a hypo in the back of the shoulder.
Damn you all, he wanted to say. He didn't know where he'd wake up—or if he'd wake.
He'd met a brother he didn't know he had. That wasn't a dream.
He'd lost Marie. He hoped they hadn't caught her. He didn't know if she could survive if they took her aboard Corinthian, if Bowe wanted a personal revenge.
He didn't know but what they were going to dump him in a can and put the lid on and ship him to Fargone or somewhere, where they'd find an unexplained frozen corpse. He stared up at the circle of interested faces. He was very, very scared, but he was losing it again…
The room dimmed. He could hear his own pulse, proving he was alive.
That was all.
Chapter Three
—i—
A BROTHER HE'D RATHER NOT HAVE met lying like a heap of laundry on the bunk in the brig, and, Christian said to himself, Austin was very possibly going to kill him, when Austin finished sorting out the fines and the penalties… none of which was his fault; but that didn't mean whoever approached Austin with a minor problem wasn't going to catch hell.
"I wouldn't go in there," Beatrice said, in the vicinity of Austin's office. As a mother, Beatrice wasn't the historic model… she'd dropped her kid between jumps, left him to cousin Saby's ten-year-old mercy, and nowadays abdicated him to Capella's, God help him. Right now Beatrice showed the ravages of a night on the docks, red eyes, hair trailing out of its usual tight twist—the glitz-paint was worn on one bare shoulder, saying Beatrice had been in bed when the search team found her or the beeper on the pocket-corn finally blasted her out of whatever lair she'd intended for the next several days.
So they'd all had cancelled plans. Capella was in a funk. Beatrice looked mildly sedated, just a little strange about the edges when she grabbed him and hugged him in the corridor, not Beatrice's maternal habit. Then she got a fistful of his hair and looked him closely in the eyes with,
"You've given us a problem. You've given Austin one."
"What was I to do? He'd been looking at the cans. And pardonnez-moi, maman, I didn't pick this particular problem. He's Austin's."
"He won't thank you."
"Pity."
He started to leave. Beatrice didn't let go her fistful of hair. "Christian. Keep your mouth shut. It will die down. We can leave this fool at Pell… send him to Earth, for that matter, and he won't find his way back."
"It won't die down. There's too broad a trail, and there's that woman…"
"Shit on that woman!"
"Shit on the whole situation, I—"
The door of Austin's office whisked aside. Austin loomed in the doorway. "Get in here!"
"Who, me?" He honestly wasn't sure, and mimed it. Austin grabbed him by the arm, jerked him through the door, and backhanded him hard into the wall, which left him nursing a sore ear and a personal indignation.
"It's not my damn fault!"
"Why could somebody just walk into the warehouse? Where in hell was the guard?"
"Millers' had people on duty, but they had to have somebody sign the damn repair order, I didn't know they were going to leave the office unlocked…"
Austin took a glancing swipe at him, total disgust. "All you had to do was have a guard on that door."
"I know that."
"You know that, sir, damn your impudence! You look to inherit Corinthian? You're a long way from it, at the rate you're going! We'll be lucky not to lose this port, and Miller, and all they do for us, you understand that? Does that remotely affect your social interests?"
"I was busting my ass, sir, getting Miller moving. I got us turned around, we just can't use any damn deckhand that comes along. We're loading, we're going as fast as the loader can roll, I've sent out the board-call. The only thing I didn't predict was Miller's man deciding to take a walk and leave the damn door unlocked—"
"Try predicting what we're going to do when the cops show up wanting Thomas Hawkins! Does that fit in your crystal ball? Sprite crew is all over the damn dock out there!"
"Looking for Marie, by my sources. Not interested in calling the cops, no more than we are. They're asking up and down the row, every bar, showing her picture. They probably think he's with her."
"Damn lucky they didn't arrest half the crew."
"I hear luck had nothing to do with it."
"Expensive luck. I'm not in a damned good mood, boy. Nobody's coming through those access doors or near our lock. Damned elusive woman. Damned persistent—and you snatch her kid? Thanks. Thanks a whole lot. It's just the luck we needed."
"Dump him in space. It's no different than leaving him lie in a warehouse full of cold cans. He was taking a tour of Miller's premises, for God's sake, it wasn't my doing, I don't know what more I could do than I did… if I'd left a body behind, you wouldn't be happy with me either, especially seeing he's your own offspring,—sir. I wouldn't want you to get the idea I wanted him dead."
"You're real close to annoying me, Christian."
"I did what seemed to me to be less liability."
"After you finally deigned to return a com call. After you gave that ship that much extra time to let Marie Hawkins loose on the dock."
"It's not my fault the transport broke down. It's not my fault everything on this God-forsaken station depends on some separate labor union—I could have fixed that damn transport with a screwdriver, Miller could have fixed the transport, we didn't know we had an emergency, and I wasn't that hard to track down, sir, I'd told Miller where I was and what general direction I was going. You could have called Miller."
"Miller isn't an officer on this ship. Damned right I called Miller, once Bianco saw fit to tell me the offloading was stalled."
"You tell Bianco what you thought about it?"
"Bianco'd told you. You were the officer of the watch, boy, and if you have any desire to stay an officer on this ship, I suggest you establish clear understandings with the duty officer of each watch, that you take threats against this ship damned seriously, that you don't screw with the guard I've put on our accesses, because I don't take for granted that woman won't try to slip us a bomb in one of the cans or walk onto this ship armed, do you hear me?"
"Yes, sir, but—"
"As long as they're searching for her… she hasn't gone to the cops or reported in. Just keep those cans moving. And let me tell you something—" Austin went to the door and opened it again. "Beatrice? Beatrice, I want you to hear this, too."
Beatrice came in… subdued, for Beatrice. She folded her arms and stood there glumly.
"I don't know how seriously you take the threat Marie Hawkins poses," Austin said. "But twenty years of threats and her skulking around out there don't add up empty in my book. She's got this kid—by her own letters, she's primed this kid of hers to get us, meaning the crew, and particularly anybody attached to me. That kid stays in the brig. Nobody takes chances with him. I'm damned serious, Beatrice."
"What do you intend to do with him?"
"Take him as far away from Sprite schedules as we can."
"No paternal interest."
"Filed right behind your maternal instincts, Beatrice, don't push me. Tell your offspring use his head. I am tired. I am hung over… Beatrice, this wasn't the best wake-up I've had in a year."
Beatrice moved in for aid and comfort. It seemed a good moment to excuse oneself out the door. Christian slid in that direction, opened the door—Austin had it set on fast, and auto-dose—and walked—
"Boy. Don't screw up."
—out. The door whisked shut in his face, leaving him blank surface instead of the pair that were ultimately responsible—leaving words in his mouth, and nowhere to spit them.
He didn't hit the door. Or open it. He dropped the fist and walked the curving deck, headed for the lift.
He'd ordered the dockside crew to keep an eye out, see if they could spot this Hawkins woman—keep her off Austin's neck. No damn thanks from Austin, Austin never asked, Austin never looked to see who did what, it was just your fault if something went wrong.
Never Austin's fault. Never Austin's damned fault. Austin never made mistakes.
—ii—
CANS WERE OFFLOADING. You could hear the hydraulics working, distant, a comfortable, all's-well sort of sound.
Couldn't figure. What station? When had he gotten back to the ship? One spectacular blow-out in a bar, maybe, drunk till he couldn't figure…
Except he was face down on a bed that didn't feel like his own, and it didn't have sheets, and his mouth felt like fuzz inside while the outside felt skinned.
A moment of fright came back to him, shadows around him while he lay on a freezing deck trying to fight them off. He grabbed the edge of the bed and sat up in a hurry, legs off the edge, and a cold plastic line dragging from his wrist.
Hell, he thought, scared. Blurred eyes made out an unfamiliar room, green, not white, an unfamiliar blur of metal grid in front of him, and a spinning of his head and a queasiness in his stomach said it hadn't been a good experience that put him in this unfamiliar place. The station brig, maybe. Maybe the cops had come and arrested everybody, and Marie…
Marie was still out there. Maybe she'd gotten away, but he hadn't, and he couldn't remember everything about how he'd come here, just the warehouse and the cold, and people around him.
People. Corinthian crew.
And there was a cold metal bracelet around his right wrist, and a plastic-sheeted cable going up to where the wall met the ceiling, which he couldn't make out the sense of, except the metal grid where the front wall ought to be, and the rest was any crewman's ordinary accommodation, without sheets, without personal items, without anything on the walls, or any internal com unit—just a patch on the wall where one might have been taken out, and nobody'd cared to paint it, or anything else people had scratched up… skuzzy walls, skuzzy panels, where previous occupants had scratched initials and obscenities.
