Alliance Rising Page 6

  So maybe that huge project had served a useful purpose, simply by making Alpha dependent on Pell’s goods long enough to bring them firmly into the Beyond’s economy, which was also long enough to build that ship and long enough to preserve Sol’s hope of getting back into some economic relevance to its offspring.

  But now that that ship existed, viable or not, now that the crew had begun to form, another, far more problematic possibility had begun to suggest itself. Observations indicated that that ship had way more uniformed personnel than required for a full four-by-four ops crew. It didn’t require a particularly suspicious mind to realize that if it merely stood off from its station, it became an independent platform firmly under EC control—maybe capable of jump; maybe not—but a platform which, from reports, could hold more enforcement personnel than any single station in the Beyond currently had serving.

  If it did eventually work out its problems and prove capable of FTL . . . one had to wonder what sort of goods it planned to carry, because the images they had of it showed no adaptation to ring-docking, and, more significant, too much personnel room and not enough cargo space.

  And they’d named it The Rights of Man. Didn’t that say something?

  And if The Rights of Man existed only to keep Alpha alive for Sol’s reasons . . . one had to wonder whether Sol itself was also building ships of that design—in anticipation of jump points yet to be found. Maybe Sol had turned sensible, realized there was no one-hopping their way to Alpha, and decided that somewhere, in some direction, in all that moving real estate, there had to be a jump-point to bridge the gap.

  The smart bet assumed the worst. Sol had the material resources to build endlessly. And likely they were using instruments and currently sending out probes—unmanned, one hoped—trying to find a route to Alpha. The success rate thus far seemed to have been zero—witness the fact no ship from Sol had ever shown up at any station on their side of that gulf of stars—but that didn’t mean that such a visit couldn’t happen at any moment, without warning, since such ships traveled faster than any message they could send.

  Interesting times they lived in.

  JR took a second drink packet—magnesium, sugar, and salt, flavored with almost-fruit, which tasted awful, unless you needed it—pulled the tab and propped his feet up. Fourth shift was on the job. Second and third were still in quarters. They hadn’t gotten another takehold, so things were going well up there, but first shift wasn’t budging from the safe, comfortable reclining chairs. Fourth shift, the seniormost seniors, the almost-retireds—they generally handled approach. Mum was in charge up there, and things were well under control.

  He stared at the drink packet. Remembered to take a sip. Not too bad.

  Mum. Lisa-Marie, but Mum to every man, woman and child aboard. JR was JR to the bridge crews; Captain, sir, to the cousins and such while they were on duty, and Senior Captain, sir, to the junior-juniors.

  First shift had settled in the lounge in their working teams—habit, after years together on the bridge. JR was solo, sole captain on first shift. Beside JR was Helm 1.1, Jim B; then Shane, who was Helm 1.2, and so on, to the number of four. And so it went, through Nav, Shortscan, Longscan, Systems, Communications, Support, Technical, Medical, Cargomaster. Four of each, all the seated crew of first shift—lifelong Family, all Neiharts; and extensions of one another, old and young.

  Elsewhere in the lounge, trainees to the posts gathered in their own groups, the next-in-lines who manned the back rows of consoles, the 1.5 and 1.6 posts, shadowing the main boards. They had boards that worked, but their decisions never reached the actual controls. The ship’s computer compared and scored those decisions against what senior crew did.

  That brought first shift to sixty-some before one even counted, at the extreme end of the lounge space, the sixteen or so runners, trainees not yet allowed on any boards, but available as hands and feet for whatever seated crew or shadows wanted—usually trivial errands, not always. It was training in patience, training in resourcefulness; a test of nerves, occasionally; and duties kept the bored and talented senior-juniors out of trouble.

  Unlike old sub-light Gaia’s leisurely system entries, where a handful of crew manned the bridge, drinking and playing cards while the engines continued their steady, years-long decel, one day being little different from the next, Finity exited jump and dropped into the system between one drugged heartbeat and the next, and the seconds after that entry were by far the most critical of any journey. Most everything Finity did was automated, working faster than human thought. But it took human beings to watch multiple readouts and assemble details—more, to know what those details meant—and it took years of shadowing and comparing decisions at the boards. It took a concentration far exceeding ordinary limits, it was grueling, and in the end, only the best of the best survived, and those who did survive became seamless lifelong teams.

  Finity was a four by four, that was to say, four at every post and four shifts, prioritized; and right now first shift was done with duty, which was why there were, at optimum, long silences in the stand-down lounge, as minds ticked down to human speeds. Bodies, stressed from jump drugs and over-hyped by system entry, processed normal things, the need to move, to blink, to shift in a seat—the sheer luxury of lateral thoughts and the simple pleasure of breathing. Synesthesia was a problem, exiting jump. Sounds had taste and the mind formed unique symbologies into which only the medics and psychs inquired—shortcuts to thought, where thought was too long or normal pathways seemed occupied. Navigators, helm, and longscanners were notoriously rare mindsets, personalities that stationers called beyond strange, and that ship’s crew carefully insulated from outside contact. JR had trained for all three before necessity and the senior-seniors’ awareness of what a four by four mega-ship was going to demand had dropped him into the senior captaincy.

  He’d been all of twenty-five shipboard years.

  Hours from handling the last jump, and they were still feeling it, sipping that almost-fruit concoction, a handful daring crumbs of real food, and risking gut spasms. Talking little. Still not ready for complex human interaction.

  But they didn’t need to talk. They were one creature: first-shift. It was safe here, comfortable here, and Mum was in charge up there—again.

  Gaia’s last first captain, Mum was, born in Gaia’s sublight days, before Gaia had thrown off the old pusher-engine, rebuilt the bridge, and gone FTL.

  Gaia was gone. Almost all the first ships were gone, some still fit to handle high-mass cargos over a short sublight crawl; but old Gaia, first of all sublighters, had had a nobler fate. She’d been broken down and broken up, surrendering her precious elements to the ambitious new Green Dock of Pell, and a bit of her, too, to Finity, first of all purpose-built mega-ships, the longhaulers, as they were beginning to be called. That plaque on the lounge bulkhead, that stylized blue Earth, in a bronze solar system—that plaque was worn shiny by generations of children’s fingers, and of crew touching that emblem for luck before a dicey bit of maneuvering. It had been on Gaia’s bridge, touched then for luck at every launch.

  The whole Neihart family had agreed to a bargain—a new ship, the first of her kind, to drive a whole new, fast-moving commerce—which had entailed an unprecedented shakeup of seniority. Gaia had been a trailblazer, and Finity carried on that legacy. When Gaia’s senior FTL crew had stepped down to fourth shift, they’d scrambled the other three shifts, promoting the ones who excelled in the sims of the as-of-then unproven ship, the quick and the young, from all four shifts. The skills were, by their training, a given—but the reflexes and stamina—they’d been the deciding factor.

  And years, now, of testing Finity to her limits, had molded them into the tightest crew the Neihart ships—possibly any ship—had ever known.

  Up there now with Mum was, notably, Vickie, who was fourth shift Helm 1, and always in charge in any risky docking.

  Mast-docking Fin
ity at this oldest of all star-stations was going to have its moments. Locks and hoses would fit. They were assured of that, at least. They wouldn’t be allowed routine and constant access to their ship while at dock. That was typical of mast docking: a station didn’t have ample resources to have people traveling up and down the mast. Work crews and bots needed the transport and they understood that.

  A reasonable rule was not something with which Finity argued.

  Alpha went so far, however, as to require the ship be vacated completely, even of infants in the loft, and to leave the hatch unlocked for inspection at Station’s whim.

  That . . . was not reasonable.

  Still, they’d conform to a point. Babies—there were three—would go to sleepover with assigned minders in the station’s reliable one-g. It was safer for them anyway. Junior-juniors—there were twelve—would go to sleepover also with minders in charge, and behave themselves, and not be larking about outside the premises, not at Alpha. JR had laid down the law, and the junior-juniors would damned well keep to the rules this time of all times. If I have to come find you, he’d said on general address, you’ll be on biohazard cleanup for the next year of your lives. To help keep them in line, their minders were breaking out some new video games, plus offering prizes. Holiday, so far as the youngsters would see it.

  Letting inspection crews wander about was, however, a definite no.

  Dealing with the EC administration was bound to have its tense moments, and that was JR’s particular problem. But he was not going to deal with them solo. Little Bear, Mumtaz, and Nomad all showed as in dock, as expected. They had all agreed to the same policy: leave a maintenance crew aboard their ships, lock up, keep quiet about it; and if Alpha decided to pull a random customs inspection, as EC regulations provided, the automatic and firm answer was—again—no. Would they want to inspect Little Bear? Probably not. There was only one of the four visiting ships station was likely to want a look at, and no, they would not get access to Finity’s End, no way in hell.

  Word came down: they had a berth. End of B-mast. No surprise: mast-end offered room enough. There were also Alpha ships docked on the B-mast, as well as their three allies: Fletcher sat opposite him now, ready to answer questions he might have, silent until those questions came. Fletcher understood. Fletcher was almost as close to him as his shift crew. They’d been rivals once, as junior-juniors, until Fletcher had decided to take his skill at shipboard mischief and put it to a very different use. These days Fletcher was head of Finity security, and, depend on it, behind those names on Fletcher’s list would be files ranging down to minutiae, ship’s characteristics, personnel, recent routes, cargo lists, legal records—everything.

  According to Fletcher’s list, Little Bear, Mumtaz, and Nomad were in the closest-in berths; of EC ships, besides the one sitting at A-mast, there was Galway, next up from Finity’s assigned berth at the far end of B-mast, with Santiago the other side of Galway. The other two locals, Firenze and Qarib, once outermost from Galway, were moving out to standoff, both under tow, not likely to the delight of the two crews or anybody else.

  That was unfortunate. Clearly Rights maintained A-mast all to itself, the mast apparently consecrated to that sole user, no matter the necessity Finity presented them. But they’d expected to have B-mast. There was no way for a mega-ship to dock at this station except at the mast end, where the pushers docked, and two such masses on one side of the main station was asking for trouble.

  Still . . . they could have put those two locals on A-mast. Putting them on standoff was downright insulting. Station’s doing, not Finity’s, still, an apology to the dislodged crews would be politic as well as polite. And JR would have no hesitation about making the apology concrete—Finity had some trade items that could slip easily into the hands of the affected crew, the sort of thing one did for favors, ship to ship, family to family—items that a station and especially an EC station, with its notions of rigid control—didn’t need to know about.

  What was still more unfortunate in the list, however, was the fact that there were just those ships. That was not as expected, not the way they had charted likely ship-presence, from black box reports and usual schedules. Come Lately was missing; so was Miriam B. Intel had had them as routed here from Bryant’s. They weren’t here. That was upsetting. The fog of jump might not be entirely lifted, but it was clear enough for instincts to say—

  Two ships missing, and one here that wasn’t predicted to be here . . .

  “We’re missing Miriam B, and Come Lately,” JR said. “And we’ve got Firenze, as a surprise presence.”

  “Firenze may have lingered on a mechanical,” Fletcher said. “She’s had notable problems.”

  “A bonus. But Miriam B—that’s a puzzle.”

  Black boxes didn’t lie. Couldn’t. Somebody might have changed plans. But violating the route you’d filed with station was a good way for bad things to happen, not to mention a way to upset your shippers.

  They’d find out the story when they docked.

  Nothing traveled faster than Finity’s End, unless it was Cyteen-built Dublin, and potentially, The Rights of Man, but so far, that ship wasn’t in the calculations. Dublin didn’t visit the Hinder Stars. She was far off at the moment, the other side of the Beyond, probably at Eversnow.

  Little Miriam B was a low-mass ship, and paradoxically, in the illogic of jump space, was a quiet, slow little presence. A quick check of records showed no other shadow in jump, but then, she was just that slow, and she might yet turn up: they’d left word where they’d been. They could overjump a ship in transit, an ability they hadn’t advertised. But it wasn’t likely they had.

  “We’re assigned B-13, mast-end,” John D, Helm 4.2 said over general address. Vickie, Helm 4.1, would be busy, preparing to finesse them in with no docking arm to assist, nothing but Helm’s skill. Finity’s structure was adapted for ring-docking, which Alpha didn’t have; and her cargo-handling was, except for exotics and biostuffs in breachable containers, designed to be temperature-controlled canisters, which required machinery the mast-docking stations didn’t have. They weren’t linking the docking probe. They were using the forward E-hatch, connecting to the station mast via magnetic grapples and a bare-basics flexible tube connection secured to the airlock. “The market is requesting our manifest,” John D said. “Mary’s sending.”

  Mary Salem Neihart was Com 4.2. All that was ordinary. Market wanted to know what they had. The goods would be posted on the boards and trading would begin, ordinary enough, but the offering would be far smaller numbers than Finity was accustomed to post. Commerce here was basic, mainly foodstuffs and essentials, and the last thing they wanted was to upset the local ships’ trading.

  But there were goods that Alpha might not expect. Liquor from Pell and Cyteen, jewelry from Viking, bulk copper from Viking. And, routine but always welcome at remote places, flour from Cyteen and Pell, along with processed fruit. Fruit and exotic alcohol sold high—very high.

  Artwork might sell well here. Handmade things of exotic materials. Not that Alpha needed to bedeck its ancient corporate walls in yet one more tapestry, but Earth would be interested, and pay. Such things, tucked away in cabin-storage during a pusher’s long sublight run, were a good investment item—always betting that the route stayed sublight, and that the cork stayed in the bottle.

  Publications—they had in great abundance, but the other ships had beat them in with those.

  “They’ll deal hard,” Fletcher said, “being the bag end run and all.”

  Which went without saying. Alpha was the end of the line for regular trade. If goods had gotten to Alpha and been rejected, they only had to be carried back again. No ship could reach Glory except through Bryant’s, and they hoped not to have to go that far.

  “We’re not here to make money,” JR said, and closed his eyes against a suddenly unstable view. Post-jump could do that to you. And no, th
ey weren’t conning anybody. The cargo they carried couldn’t profit enough for Finity to run clear to Alpha, as was. Nor was there any prospect to bring in three other merchanters clear from Venture runs and the Beyond. No way was there sufficient profit here.

  “They’re not fools,” Fletcher put in quietly. “They’ll know the minute that manifest hits the boards that we’re here for some other reason.”

  “Probably assume we’re here for the A-mast view,” JR said, and, after a test through slitted eyes, met Fletcher’s amused gaze.

  “Bets on how long before someone asks us directly?”

  “Likely too embarrassed,” Fletcher said. “The damned thing looks like Finity’s half-starved twin, and they can’t very well pretend it’s not there.”

  “We don’t mention it,” JR said firmly. “Not our problem. They bring it up, we’re politely curious, as seems appropriate, but we don’t point fingers. Just let them worry down that track for a bit.”

  JR had some sympathy for the Alpha EC’s situation. But only a little. No few years ago, following the theft of the Finity plans, Pell had deported the officials and staff of the Pell EC office, graciously releasing even the chief culprits from detention, and suggesting that they could find their way to Alpha at the EC’s expense—one of that office having already made that trip with the stolen files.

  It was also true that in their eagerness to impress EC’s top brass, the thieves had jumped a bit prematurely. The sight of Rights at close range—Finity as originally designed—would be interesting, and of course they were capturing image, but beyond that, the design plans it was based on were woefully incomplete. They lacked the downside corridor, offices, and docking probe for the new ring-docking system, for the most obvious change, but far more significantly, those stolen plans had nothing of the post-test programming and mechanical tweaks that made Finity the fastest, most stable ship yet built, surpassing, they were sure, even Cyteen’s Dublin.