Alliance Rising

C. J. CHERRYH

Chapter 1

Rosie’s Pub was Alpha-based spacer turf. It was where you went on the Strip

to spend time, to talk with shipmates, friends, and other ships’ crew who were

regulars at Alpha Station. And like other bars on the Strip, Rosie’s maintained, half-lost in the

glassware and the bottles of liquor on the shelves above the bar, a schedule

board—a list of ships coming in, ships leaving, ships currently in dock. Widescreen, three separate displays: interstation FTLers, maintenance

insystemers, and on the far left, the sub-lighters, those two remaining links to

Sol Station and Earth, one ship coming, one going, on their ten-year-long

voyages—Sol being the only star outside the jump range of the faster-than-

light ships: ironic proof, some said, that there was a god. That part of the screen rarely changed: two ships, two destinations, no

surprises there. The other two sections, with FTLers listed in the center and

insystemers on the right, ebbed and flowed with the tides of commerce—

shifting but generally predictable. Until three hours ago, when the words

in arrival

had flashed above the

listing of FTL ships and assigned berths. In arrival. With no name or origin, just an ominous blank where both

ought to appear. Three hours and counting, and still no update. Nobody remembered that happening. Ever. FTL ships dropped in at system

zenith and sent ID before the first vane pulse, so ID arrived nearly

simultaneously with the entry wavefront. In arrival

always,

always

, came

with a ship name attached. Period. That information kept honest folk from

flashing on Beta Station ...

and the ghosts of stationers who had just

disappeared

, back at the dawn of all the star-stations, when the sub-lighter

Santa Maria

had come into Beta Station, at Proxima Centauri, and found ...

nothing. No remains, no explanation, no clue. No one visited Proxima, ever, after that. Alpha Station, at Barnard’s

Star,

the first station outside Sol system itself, developed daughter stations in the

opposite direction, and thrived. Until FTL changed everything. Alpha still maintained its unique sub-light trade with Earth, over a twenty-

year round trip, a distance only pusher-ships could travel without a break. But

one of Alpha’s own daughter stations, Bryant’s, farther on in a direction

opposite to the Centauri stars, was close enough to Alpha for modern FTLers

to one-hop it, and it was close enough to Glory and Venture to do the same. With those stations, Alpha maintained a modern traffic, always the same

ships, generally on a schedule. And give or take the age of Alpha’s systems

and the occasional glitches, citizen nerves and the futures market stayed fairly

steady. But who was this inbound now?

Locals and spacers alike wanted to know. And they wanted an answer a lot sooner than three hours with no ID. Malfunction in the display?

If so, it was a station-wide malfunction. Crew

from bars up and down the strip poked their heads in, asking was Rosie’s

display frozen, too?

In Rosie’s, the early assumption had been that it

was

just a glitch, that the

screen was frozen—except, as various people immediately pointed out, the

time

kept ticking away in the corner of the display. And over on another display, behind the blue neon sign for Beloit’s

Premium Vodka, the news screen and the station information screen ran on as

usual, unglitched. Likewise an entertainment channel at the back of the bar

was running smoothly. God knew, malfunctions were no stranger to Alpha. The station being the

oldest of all star-stations, breakdowns happened now and again, though

usually not so long-lasting in a system so basic and critical to a station’s well-

being. Consolation was that, over near the hand-printed

Rosie’s Special Ale

,

the local market board ticker, that other heartbeat of commerce, was still

running. Its clock marked a steady flow of time above the list of current prices

for goods on Alpha, and last-known prices for the same goods on other

stations. Every ship that came in caused a cascade of changes in those prices

—and not only as their cargo went on offer. Along with physical cargo, every

ship also brought information safely stowed in its black box, untouchable

information vital to every aspect of interstellar trade. And as an arriving ship’s

black box fed its last gulp of data from afar into the station’s systems, that

data joined the data every other ship had fed in from every other station, some

of it way out of current date and from the other end of civilization, some near

enough to be useful. The station’s computer would rapidly sort out the

relevant market information,

and that screen would stabilize, reacting only to

in-station trade—until the next ship arrived. That information flow affected the markets. It affected plans. It was the

routine pulse of trade and business. But in the last three hours since the arrival

screen had frozen, local prices had begun to react, wildly, unpredictably, for

internal reasons. Uncertainty did that. Movement in the market meant people

shifting their bets, freeing money, prepared to draw back and hope to buy in

low. Betting on changes in prices, whatever that incoming ship carried. People with money at stake were not happy. Spacers and station customers

with agreements ready to sign, now put on hold, would be pissed as hell. Dammitall, was the frequent comment. With

In Arrival

lit up, there

should

be a ship name, not a frozen screen. A manifest should arrive to settle those

fluctuating numbers. Hours on—with no announcement from admin—it was insane. Did admin

want

a riot on the Strip?

Big question was: what ship was it?

Had to be incoming from Bryant’s

Star. There was nowhere else for it to originate, sanely speaking. There were a

few Alpha regulars not in port, ships who

might

have changed their mind,

done a quick turnaround at Bryant’s, but how would

that

warrant this silence?

And why would they, with their regulars at Venture and Glory waiting?

Unless it had to do with the strangers currently in port: three of them, all

from routes farther up the line, from Pell and beyond. Three ships trading in

foodstuffs and metals, and not saying

why

they’d come all the way out here,

or when they planned on leaving. This problem with the schedule boards was downright embarrassing,

something major as this malfunctioning in front of these fancy, state-of-the-art

outsider ships. Spacers began to speculate in low tones about, well, maybe station had

shut down the flow deliberately. Maybe it was an accident in the jump zone. A mistake could fling a ship into Alpha’s small red sun. Miscalibration of a

too-old nav system could send it on a comet’s path, outbound for a million

years or so, nobody able to catch it—a cheerful suggestion that came from

one of

Firenze

’s stranded crew. Station might not be getting any information

from the arrival and station might still be without any answer. Maybe it was just a damaged antenna. That had happened. Station might be

trying, in the fierce output of a sun, to find a very tiny signal. So why didn’t they just

say?

A breakdown?

A glitch?

Maybe

a ship in serious trouble. Maybe, nervous-making thought, a ship that

chose

to run incognito. The

Santiago

captain, word came down the strip, had queried Alpha

Central—what’s going on with the board?

What ship’s coming in?

And gotten just a, “System is down. Be patient.” That ...

to a captain’s

direct question about an incoming ship. No denial or confirmation that

something

was out there, which anyone with half a brain

knew

was the

significant part of that question. Central could have set that concern right with

four simple words:

There is no ship. So maybe there was and maybe there wasn’t. Secrets ran deep on Alpha. Maybe station was withholding that information for some good reason. But

they’d damned well better say something soon. Speculation began to run amok, quietly spoken, so as not to jinx the

possibility, that, God, maybe it was finally an FTL arrival from Sol. That

came from a stationer mouth, first, a waiter—no spacer really thought that. Even if Sol had found that long-sought jump-point to get them here, a sim-

trained crew would be dead crazy to be the first to test it. But it

could

be, the speculator insisted, a robot probe. It could mean that

FTL to Sol was on the horizon, and they would all soon be living in luxury. Stationer-thinking. Practical speculation said

dream on, stationer,

and moved on to another,

more realistic possibility. Realistic and a bit ominous. Was it

another

outsider

—and this one not saying its business?

In the last ten days, Alpha had had

three

ships come in, two of which had

never visited Alpha before, none of the three admitting any connection with

the other two—and they had sent metal and food prices down. A temporary

dip, that—canny traders didn’t panic. But the arriving outsider crews were

standoffish and sticking to a ship-speak nobody could penetrate, and not

anything like the same ship-speak, either. Alpha crews might welcome one

ship—charitably. There was barely enough trade in the First Stars to keep

Alpha-based ships moving on very limited routes. Some ship that generally

operated the other side of Venture Station

might

drop in, oh, every half-

decade or so, with some new item unique enough to warrant the cost, and it

could be welcome. Two such at once, yes ...

once in living memory, when

two had jumped in at the same opportunity and destroyed their own profit

margin. But

three?

They’d undercut Alpha-based ships’ barely break-even margins

on two vital commodities. They’d made ships reassess their own

plans and

scramble for cargo that wouldn’t be affected by some similar dump of goods

at Bryant’s, which these ships would have visited, coming here. Questions on

that

topic had started to fly up and down the Strip, to which

“Don’t know,” and “Bob down in cargo said that his cousin Sam heard that

one of the newcomers said ...” weren’t highly informative answers. Station, on the other hand, wasn’t complaining about the influx of

foodstuffs or metals. And when that third ship had showed up within five

hours of the second, bars and sleepovers mothballed since the last pusher-ship

departure had been pressed into operation, fast as personnel could be pulled in

from the residency side of the station. The newcomers might use a ship-speak

nobody could understand, but they had pidgin enough when it came to food

and drink and lodging, and ship’s scrip began to flow into stationer hands. Two newly reopened bars were routinely full of the outsiders. And now might a fourth have arrived?

Maybe in trouble and unable to send

the standard identification?

Thoughts of “What could be wrong?” began to

extend to “something wrong further away than Bryant’s?”

Something going on between Pell and Cyteen, the two mega-stations that

thus far had managed a relatively peaceful co-existence?

Not a happy thought at all, but a possibility that always lurked in the

shadows of every Alpha-based mind. Not surprising, then, that for the last three hours speculation had drawn

local spacers from bar to bar up and down the Strip, waiting—hoping—for

some flasher to come up on-screen to say it was all a false alarm, that the

input was screwed, that some fool had pushed the wrong button, and there

was

no ship. Because even if that incoming ship wasn’t in trouble, one more crew

crowding the Strip, one more bar opening to take favored, experienced station

staff away from the regular Alpha crews’ watering holes, one more ship’s

requests for accommodations and services stacking up in the already-

scrambled administrative queue, with

more

goods flooding into a small

market ...

well, tempers already on edge were going to snap, no way not, and

damned if they’d feel guilty if a little furniture got broken, not after this too-

damned-long silent treatment by admin. “Did you hear?” a newcomer said. “They’re opening the Olympian. They’re calling in staff.”

“No way,” somebody said. But a check of listings proved it was true. And it stopped being a

question

of “is it a ship?” and became a question of “just how big

is

it?” The

Olympian, old and regal, was the palace that housed pusher crews during their

extended sleepovers. Big crews. Favored crews. But it couldn’t be a pusher. There were only two serving Alpha. You

wouldn’t ordinarily mistake their arrival signature for an FTLer’s, not to

mention their vector. Sol began to be in question again. And Station ops

had

to know more than they were saying, damn straight. 47.3 minutes into the fourth hour—the screen flashed. And all eyes turned. Up came the Alpha Station logo, the Greek lower-case alpha in blue

supered over the Earth Company’s round gold EC, a portentous change that

drew instant mutterings of relief and the sound of bodies pushing back chairs

to get a better view at the bar. “Well?” somebody asked of the unresponsive screen. The image persisted. There was a moment of hushed silence in Rosie’s. Then the standard message crawl appeared, saying: ...

Berths number B-12 and B-14 are being reassigned ...

“Crap!”

someone exclaimed....

Ships are being moved back by service craft at this time. There is no

need for crew to report. The stationmaster offers apologies to

Qarib

and

Firenze

crew. There will be no charges for the extended wait or for the

pushback. The bar broke out in profanities and a predominant, “

Charges?

What

friggin’ charges?

For pushing our ship out?

For stranding us?

They got no

right!” and from a Firenze: “What the hell?

Repair already forgets about us,

stuck out on the end. Dammit, they’re going to move a repair crew out

to

us,

or Abrezio’s gonna get himself a new one!”

And: “Dammit, put the fucker up on A-mast!

Let

Rights

fuckin’ move

over!”

Followed by a chorused:

“Dream on.”

Nobody, but nobody intruded on A-mast. The Rights of Man,

Alpha

station’s own bloody huge albatross, was too precious to be put at risk. “Guess that settles it,” Fallan Monahan said quietly. “That spook incoming

must be real.”

“But why two berths?” Ross, also Monahan, of

Galway

, was having the

same uneasy feeling. “Security?”

“Maybe it’s just that damn

big.”

“Pusher?” Ross asked, and Fallan shrugged. “Sol

could’ve

built another pusher without telling us. Can’t imagine them

throwin’ us resource like that. But it’d be helpful if they put another

pusher on

the route, providin’ they sent something

not

earmarked for

Rights.”

Ross, only a time-lagged two decades and a half, hadn’t lived long enough

to see an Alpha-based pusher-ship in dock but once in his life, and he was

hard put to recall if it had needed two berths. All he remembered was that it

was

huge. A ship designed to push the mass of a station core between stars. And thinking of that, he wondered ...

would two berths be enough?

“F’ God’s sake,

is

it a friggin’ pusher comin’ in?” someone asked his

question aloud. “From where?

And what’s it doin’ on

our

list?”

“Could be an inbound with a problem.” A new voice in the crowd. “Maybe

leavin’ room for repair modules. Humanitarian takes precedence.”

Any incoming with an emergency situation had a right to immediate

access, to dock, offload and onload and stay at dock as long as they had to:

that was a law ancient as they came. Alpha would have to make room enough

to grant that. “Precedence my ass!

We got a

schedule

to keep.”

That was temper talking; no one in Rosie’s would point fingers. Still, it

seemed a prudent time to keep quiet, seeing as how at B-10,

Galway

had not

been affected by the reshuffling, and neither had the Rodriguezes’

Santiago

, at

B-8.

Maybe it was just timing:

Galway

had finished her loading and was in

the final stages of resupply and fueling;

Santiago

was in the onloading

process. Qarib

and

Firenze

were endmost on the B-mast. Qarib

had refueling

and cargo yet to go, so she would have to be moved in again—which she

could be as soon as

Galway

headed out. But unlucky

Firenze—

not even

operable—had been undergoing yet another repair at dock. If this incoming

ship also had problems, where did

humanitarian precedence

leave them?

No matter what, all those operations lost precious time. An unguessable

extent of time. Time for the numbers to flux, time for the expectant customers

on the far end of the run to get nervous and start looking elsewhere for their

goods. Station populations depended on timely arrivals of those goods. Ships’

reputations

depended on keeping their routes reliable. All of that meant real,

tangible, economic damage to the ships being moved out, but

beyond

all that,

being displaced by a ship only starting its process was—well, that was

outright

disrespect,

dammit. That incoming ship should be the one to wait. Ships’ reputations were touchy matters, their priorities and prerogatives with

stations were jealously guarded, no matter their relative size or importance. Priority rested with the first-in unless a life was at stake. And the reaction to that disrespect would be gathering on the Strip right

now. Four spacers certainly left Rosie’s with fury in their stride, headed out to

confer with family seniors, and you could bet the captains involved would be

headed for station offices to raise merry hell about whatever was going on—

and bent on getting every compensation and concession they could squeeze

out of admin. Everyone else just stared at the screen, waiting for ...

something. Anything. So what the hell was going on that station couldn’t give a name to?

Maybe station had balked. Maybe the delay in response was station telling

somebody off. Maybe station had been hoping not to have to clear those

legitimate and loyal ships to make room, only to lose the argument. But who could have that kind of pull?

With what leverage?

EC. Earth Company. That was the obvious answer. The EC

owned

the

station, owned the station and all the ships that came into dock. But that

would mean a pusher ...

a new one, as Fallan said. Maybe even one with

supply to bolster their foundering station. And if not a pusher ...

well, there

remained the ever-hopeful fantasy that the phantom jump-point between

Alpha and Sol had finally been found, that they finally had a reachable point

of mass that would make the potentially lucrative Sol route an FTL run, not a

twenty-year expedition. Neither of which seemed remotely likely. The practical bet was still on another outsider. The three outsider ships they already had,

Little Bear, Mumtaz,

and

Nomad,

were all Venture registry, generally on the Venture-Pell run, with a dogleg up

to Viking, maybe Mariner or even beyond. If Venture was looking to expand

Venture-Alpha trade ...

that might offer station something it very badly

needed. That incoming ship might carry an offer they

couldn’t

refuse. Station, already running lean thanks to that monster on A-mast eating up

every damned gram of cargo that came in from Sol, was desperate for

everything from flour to iron. If Venture was willing to expand trade, if

granting Venture ships a regular berth here was the price of that increase, then

station had to be tempted. Fools not to be. But ...

damn. The economics didn’t work out for little ships, the ships

that, dammitall, had

resisted

the allure of the Farther Star routes and remained

loyal to the First Stars. The ships that, dammitall again, had kept those First

Star stations alive for generations. Beyond doubt, station was already benefitting from the increased crew

traffic on the Strip. Spacers from outside the normal routes were spending

scrip. Sleepovers were booked as they hadn’t been in living memory, and on

the second arrival, station had invoked bar assignments, meaning that ships

were assigned certain bars for their crew and put on notice of good behavior if

they strayed into another ship’s territory. And not a one of those establishments that wasn’t packed, most of the

time. Ordinary eateries, where empty tables were the rule, had called up staff,

for God’s sake. The influx of scrip might have been roaring good news—if

these outsiders hadn’t been so damned uncommunicative about their reasons

for being here; and

nobody

believed ship-speak was all they could use. When

strange things happened this close to the edge of nowhere, with the economy

so fragile, people got anxious. When ships got disrespected in the process, spacers got angry. Damn

straight, they did. As for the ships they were moving off the mast—which meant undocking

from the mast and pushing out and away, to let them sit unmanned,

unattended except for a robot pusher maintaining attitude and relative position

—you did that for a hulk or a construction part, but for a working ship?

It was

unprecedented anywhere, in Ross’s memory. It was an insult, dammit, and

there was clearly no consideration of moving anybody up to A-mast, oh, no. The Rights of Man

sat up there,

loomed

up there, the Earth Company’s pet

project, a monster of a ship designed to challenge the likes of Pell’s

Finity’s

End

and Cyteen’s

Dublin

, the mega-ship merchant ships that were, everyone

said, the future of trade for the Farther Stars, built for ring-docking and cans,

for a volume of cargo that Alpha or Glory or Bryant’s couldn’t even conceive

of. Oh, yes ...

The Rights of Man

got all the room she needed, plus a security

perimeter, which meant that all of A-mast was off limits and had been for

seven years and more, ever since they’d moved

Rights

in from her

construction area. “My bet,” Fallan said quietly, just to Ross, “is that

Rights

is the reason for

this sudden flood of outsiders. She had her engine test, oh, long enough ago

that word could have traveled far enough and brought a visit back again. Spies is probably what we got, ships from Pell just comin’ to have a look-

see.”

She sits, is what she does. That was Ross’s jaundiced thought. She can’t

move. But saying that out loud wasn’t politic, even here, in the heart of what

had been

Galway

’s home port and home bar for as long as he’d been allowed

to leave the minders. Rights

sat up there and sopped up resources. Everything

for the

Rights

build, from engineers to plumbers to

massive pusher-loads of

resources from Sol—all went for

Rights,

and real coffee, once actually

affordable on Alpha every decade or so, was something only Fallan—old and

time-dilated as hell—had ever tasted. Sol said build, and Alpha built, even

while the pipes leaked a puddle in Rosie’s kitchen, who couldn’t even do his

own repairs because he couldn’t get resources. Put it on a work order, they’d

say, and it would get fixed. But it wouldn’t, until it flooded the place and

then

it’d be a priority, with Rosie charged a premium for overtime labor. If it

wasn’t a high-pressure line (and Rosie’s kitchen drain and toilet weren’t) it

could wait. Seven years ago,

Rights

had moved out of her construction frame and

docked at the top of A-mast, not under her own power, but pushed and tugged

ever-so-gently by service craft. Five of them. Big day. The rest of the universe hadn’t cared that much. But maybe someone had been watching, last year, when, to a lot of hype,

Rights

had moved out of dock and run under her own power, tested her

engines to system limits, come back, docked,

very

slowly ...

and gone back

to sitting. That hesitant and aborted performance was downright scary—to any self-

respecting spacer. An FTL out of control was a threat to themselves and

anything in their vicinity. It was no secret that the EC had

stationers

manning

that ship, stationers who’d trained on sims. Stationers

who were supposedly

going to take that ship FTL. Station-born crew who were putting on the blue

EC uniform and expecting it all would work. And the sum total of that crew’s actual experience?

Rights’

ops crew

had

done shadow-training—once—in a run to Bryant’s Star on another ship. They’d sat at boards that looked and responded just like the real thing, made

decisions, input instructions to the ship ...

just as if they were actually

running it. Fortunately, from what

Qarib

crew said after, their calculations

had not, thank God, been what actually

had

gone into the ship’s computer. Thanks to instructions from the ship’s real crew, they had

not

dropped

Qarib

into the heart of the star. That was it, as far as

Rights’

training went: sims, that one run shadowing a

working crew on the smallest hauler out there, and a single in-system jaunt

which had included one pulse of the vanes, a test that, rumor said, had shut

down prematurely. Maybe Fallan was right. Maybe that run

had

scared people and these

stranger ships were here to assess the progress first hand, not trusting rumor

or Alpha’s official word. But spies, if it was just spying, were quiet. One ship was quiet. Three ...

maybe now four ...

ships?

That wasn’t quiet. That was a push. The screen stayed steady, except that running time-stamp. Four hours,

eight minutes. Tension could only hold so long. People ordered beers, Rosie

and his waitstaff drew them, and spacers drifted back to tables. “Want to sit?” Ross asked, scanning the large premises for a vacant table. “We got the view here at the bar,” Fallan said. Fallan was time-dilated as

hell, pale, thin skin, not so many wrinkles as one might expect, grey-haired—

he wore it shagged about his ears. How old

was

Fallan?

Hell, he’d say, it’s

complicated. Pusher before he was a merchant spacer, oldest of the Monahans, and

great-grandfather to one of the Monahan lines, great-uncle to a good few

more, from the days before, from the time when babies were conceived and

born in the long decades between stations, when youngers grew up knowing

both parents. These days, like all FTLers, they relied on the Monahan women

to bring new life aboard, and scattered their own offspring unguessed and

untracked, from Venture to Glory and Alpha and back. Fallan was Nav 1 on

Galway,

oldest crewman aboard, probably oldest of

any spacer that walked the deck on Alpha. Ross Monahan, at a mere twenty-

four shipboard years, was Nav 1.3 —meaning on

Galway

he shadowed the

navigation boards, reading the data, making judgement calls the computer

noted without implementing ...

first shift backup to first shift nav, backup

and trainee, but he worked right beside Fallan. He shadowed Fallan on the Strip, too—for one thing, to learn something,

because Fallan dropped gems now and again; but for another, because Fallan

was

Galway

’s treasure, and a little fragile in a press. Captain Niall Monahan

had said, after a certain donnybrook on Glory’s Strip, “You stay with him,

Ross. You just stay right with him. He doesn’t know, sometimes, how fragile

he is. And he’ll fight, the fool, if

Galway

’s fighting.”

So, well, it was an excuse to stay close and hear Fallan’s stories, and to ask

him questions that, God, kept him thinking, kept him dreaming of things few

people living had seen or experienced, kept him asking himself how long until

he knew a tenth of what Fallan Monahan knew. Fallan took the next beer served and shoved it at him across the wet bar

surface. Standing room only, and Fallan didn’t opt to sit down, so Ross leaned

on the bar and watched the unchanging display. “What’s your best guess?” he asked Fallan. “Who’s behind this?”

“Pell,” Fallan said flatly. “Pell.”

“The three we have are Venture registry.”

Fallan glanced at him. “So’s

Galway,

isn’t she?

Registry’s nothin’ but

where a ship’s built.” And gazing into his beer. “It’s been coming. Long time

it’s been coming. Ever since Venture built that station module without so

much as a by-your-leave from Sol—this has been coming.”

That was a far stretch for a connection, ancient history, even for Fallan. “You mean way back when they set out to Pell’s Star?”

“Mmm. Set the numbers in motion, they did. Been fillin’ the unknowns

ever since. A jump waitin’ for a mass point ...” A blink, and another glance. “You weren’t there for the original fuss. Me mum and gran ...

they were.”

Ross recognized Fallan in one of his moods, relaxed and just listened. No

matter how many times he heard Fallan’s stories, he always,

always

learned

something new. “When they built Pell’s Station,” Fallan said, “it was just like old

Gaia

tellin’ the EC where they could stick their replacement crew—on that very

first sublight run, when

Gaia

come back to Sol an’ told the EC they were

stayin’ aboard forever an’ claimin’ the ship for their own, and there was

nothin’ the EC could do about it. Just the doin’ of it changed everything. Same

when Cap’n Pell organized to take that station core Venture Station had sittin’

around, waiting for someplace to go. The EC was saying cranky old UV Ceti,

sittin’ so close an’ all, was going to cut loose and fry any life at Tau Ceti. The

EC was all ‘wait on better shielding.’ Word at

Venture

was that Sol damned

well knew it was looking at a potential biostuffs gold mine in that sweet-zone

planet that was hell and away closer to Venture than Sol. Word was the EC

didn’t

want

a station at that star. No more ex-clu-sivity. No more Earth as the

sole source. So rather than waiting for a go-ahead that likely wouldn’t come

from Sol for decades, if it came at all, Cap’n Pell and Venture Station just said

screw you and did what they knew was right. It was a risk. A big one. The EC

could’ve cut Venture Station itself right out of the loop and starved ’em into

compliance before they could really set up. But they took the risk and pushed

that core on to the next star. His

star. Tau Ceti. An’

his

planet. Pell’s World. Downbelow. They just

did. Just like

Gaia. ”

“And it paid off,” Ross said, “just like

Gaia.”

Fallan shrugged. “You could say.”

That shrug perplexed Ross. Of

course

it had paid off. If that expansion to

Tau Ceti had never happened, the First Stars would be helpless now against

the EC’s every whim. Hard to imagine, being

that

dependent on

Sol. Hard to

imagine there only being

one

source of biostuffs besides the tanks. But that

was the way it had been before they built Pell Station. True, Alpha was hurting these years, thanks to the EC’s obsession with

Rights

, but it still wasn’t starving. Biostuffs came from Pell, some even from

Cyteen. Heavy metals, to expand, repair, and upgrade ships and station

alike ...

those were a different matter, and why

Firenze

made every jump

with crossed fingers and why Rosie plugged the leaks with duct tape. Venture

had heavy metals—the only one of the First Stars that did—but the supply

was limited and Venture used it up as fast as their belters could mine it. From

the beginning, Alpha had had Sol to supply the heavies ...

until it all started

going into

Rights. “Mixed blessing,” Fallan said, with a little nod. “It’s the numbers, Ross-

lad. The mass shift. Pell was just the beginning. Pell’s Star had resources, but

Pell alone couldn’t change the universe. It didn’t have the numbers. On its

own, it could only make the whole system richer. But beyond Pell there was

Viking, rich with heavies. Then Mariner. And Cyteen ...

hell, Cyteen took a

page from Cap’n Pell’s book. A bunch of geeks went and hijacked another

station core that was supposed to be Mariner. They stole that core

and

a

pusher, and just kept goin’.”

“Geeks?”

“With the souls of pirates,” Fallan said, without explaining. “And that’s

when everything began to accelerate. They steal a core, take them a star and

the next viable planet with nobody’s permission, then turn about and tell the

EC

and

Pell to go to hell.”

“So really, it started with Cyteen,” Ross said, but Fallan shook his head. “Without Pell doin’ it first, they wouldn’t’ve thought of it, bein’ pirates. Pell, he was an explorer, a colonizer. Those eggheads just wanted to develop

their tech without any checks or balances. Pell bein’ there gave them a buffer

between them and Sol. Gave them a chance to jack up their birth rate with

birth-labs, terrifying every sane person from Mariner to Sol, and then they

went and capped it all with a magic pill that keeps the lot of them alive

indefinitely. Not content with personal immortality, no, they smuggle rejuv to

the highest bidders, who find out the hard way that they got to keep takin’ it

or die. And the Cyteeners, they claim—oh so innocent—that only their planet

produces the stuff, oh, they’ll try hard to supply it ...

but it’ll cost. So they

make themselves richer than God. Then,

then

, toppin’ all, they go an’ invent

FTL and just hand the tech out for free.”

“Except,” Ross said, “except to Sol.”

“Oh, they don’t give a damn if Sol’s got the tech. Givin’ it to the stations,

however, that skewered Sol good and proper, that did. FTL, free for one and

all, and Cyteen’ll even convert the old pushers to FTL for

free

an’ train the

crew while they wait. They have nav charts, also free, that includes everybody

but

Sol, because there’s Sol—and the EC—way off in all that clutter with no

good jump point available. Least so far as Cyteen cared to check. Long as the

entire system ran only on pushers, Sol was equal to everybody, and a mite

more equal, in their own reckoning. With FTL linking everybody

but

Sol, Sol

was screwed. You think those Cyteen eggheads didn’t see that comin’?

Pell

now, gotta wonder if they’re not keepin’ us alive as somethin’ of an

afterthought, maybe as insurance against Cyteen, seein’ as how gettin’ in bed

with pirates can get your throat slit.”

That was a new slant on what Ross had always thought of as ancient

history. A scary one. “Or maybe they’re playin’ nice because they’re seein’ pirates on the other

side. EC pirates. An’ maybe they just want us on

their

side when those EC

pirates escape their sublight prison.”

Definitely scary. “’Course it could be just because we’re a market.” Fallan gave him a half-

wink, seeming to read his mind as Fallan could sometimes do. “So—how

does the EC deal with this?

Instead of talking to Pell and changin’ its ways,

instead of sending us more of the good stuff to trade with Pell and becoming

part of what

is

, the EC pirates in the EC offices on Pell steal the plans for

Pell’s top secret mega-ship, then the EC pirates back at Sol order Alpha to use

those plans to build them a mega-ship of their own, and to throw all

subsequent pusher loads into that damn monster. It’s like they never even

considered that Pell might take

exception

to that theft and cut us off entirely—

which they still could—like maybe they don’t care if only Alpha survives and

that, only so they finish that damned ship. Early on, maybe they could justify

it. Early gossip said those monster ships could maybe one-hop it to Sol, which

would make them real tempting to those folks just itchin’ to get out here and

get hands-on control. I never saw it, myself. Couldn’t make the numbers

work, no matter what. And far as we know now—I was right. But the good ol’

EC just kept buildin’, didn’t they?

Even after

Finity

was operational and her

performance numbers became official. They kept building and they’ll keep

building, pusher load after pusher load, until that ship runs, and when it

does ...” Fallan shrugged. “We’re killing ourselves here, Ross-me-lad, and

for what reason?

A ship that, if it ever does jump, could replace the

lot of us. A ship that, even if it never leaves dock, has likely already screwed us all. Just

by existin’.”

“What you’re saying is,” Ross said, watching condensation run down the

side of his mug and join a set of circles on the scarred countertop, “we stay

alive here because of foodstuffs we can only get from Pell—while we build

that monster to compete with Pell. You think maybe Pell’s finally out of

humor about it and these ships are here to put the lot of us out of business?”

“Honestly?” Fallan rubbed his chin, took a sip of beer, and stared at the

screen. “No. More likely they just want to get a look at that honking great

ship up there. Pell’s

got

to know it’s been crewing-up and making trials. And

no way in hell Pell’s not a mite-bit curious about that. Maybe wondering if

Sol

has

finally got a jump-point.”

Pell definitely had a proprietary connection to that build, however

unwillingly, and it was no secret. Those

were the stolen plans taking shape. Time was, the EC had had offices at all the stations this side of Cyteen,

including Pell. Station

directors

had all been EC-appointed—except for

Pell’s, and the stations Pell had built. From the start, in defiance of EC

directives, Pell had carried on a highly lucrative business with Cyteen, and it

was toward Cyteen Pell looked these days for economic expansion and

competition. That was why, when Cyteen built a monster ship,

Dublin,

at

their

station, Pell had stripped down old

Gaia

for her steel and built one to

match her:

Finity’s End. The EC had been upset. Sol read Pell right enough: Pell wasn’t going to

turn over that ship or send it where Sol wanted: Pell was in a head-to-head

contest with Cyteen, and they weren’t handing

this

design out for free. So early on, before construction of

Finity

had even begun, the EC office at

Pell had gotten their hands on the files, and EC couriers had carried the plans

up the line to Alpha. Alpha in turn had transmitted the information via the

Stream at light speed to Sol, the way information had to travel that route; and

twelve years later, had gotten orders back up the Stream to build the EC’s

own mega-ship based on those plans, on a priority above everything. On the

next pusher-ship, Andrew Jackson Cruz had arrived, with a pusher-load of

materials and a mandate: to make certain

The Rights of Man

became a reality. From the start, the question every Alpha ship had asked was: To what

purpose had Alpha been ordered to build such a ship?

To haul what?

There

wasn’t that much trade to move out of here. And most importantly:

once that

monster did move, where did Alpha’s own ships—small and centuries old,

most of them—fit into that economy?

But then, and like every plan the EC made, that ship had been slow to take

shape, waiting on supply from Sol and a lightspeed dataflow that took twelve

years to round-trip. Concerns ebbed and ships and stations alike adjusted to

the new flow of goods, such as they got from Pell. Nobody had been that surprised earlier this year, either, when

Rights

had

failed its first trial. Early apprehensions first that it would jump to Sol and

second, that it would drive them all out of business ...

had sunk down to a

sigh and a business-as-usual for the EC: grand plan, flawed mess of an

execution. Sol’s monster ship would have been a local joke, if it weren’t so

disruptive of everything Alpha should be doing. It was a notorious

embarrassment clear to Venture. But could that ship really worry Pell?

Could it give Pell ideas about

establishing control here—

before

it became viable?

“You think Pell wants their plans back?” Ross said it as a joke. “Little late for that, in’t it?”

“So maybe they’re sending us a repair crew. Might be afraid of a mass that

big popping into their system out of control.”

A dry laugh. “Possible,” Fallan said. “Anything’s possible. I tell you

something. The EC at Sol has always had notions they have a natural-born

right to everything out here. And what worries

me

about that ship up there on

A-mast—”

Fallan stopped there. Some things

were

dangerous to say, even in Rosie’s. But the ambient was noisy, somebody had put the music on, and Fallan

went on. “You see all these blue-coats runnin’ around the Strip that weren’t

there five years ago?

Those stationer hires of

Rights

aren’t all training for ops

crew. They’re enforcer-types. Watch their eyes, note how they look sharper

the longer they’ve worn those blue coats. Note how they’re poppin’ into bars

and out again on the Strip. Note that batch that was just now in the doorway. And now they aren’t.”

Ross

had

noticed that batch looking in and leaving. It was always that way

on Alpha. But more so lately. “Watching the strangers.”

“Looking for the strangers on the station, wanting to know where they are,

where we are, who’s talking to whom. Watching us. Watching, because that’s

what they do.”

“The blue-coats are still Alpha-born.”

“Ross, lad, the EC’s stupid, but it’s not asleep. There’s high-level admin

come in to build that ship up there. And remember, Sol has the

Finity

plans

same as we do. Original theory was, yeah, a mega-ship could one-hop six,

seven lights and it’d get to Sol easy with

no

jump-point. That’s all slid back

to, well, probably not. So what

else

do they do with it, with no jump-point in

that direction?

They’re hiring every unemployed stationer who passes the

enforcement physical. They’re running sims to train ops crew. That’s maybe a

hundred on a ship that big. But how many blue uniforms do we have walking

around out there, looking into spacer business?”

“Too damn many.”

“Enforcement, is what. A lot of it. Like they’re bracing themselves to hold

onto Alpha. Like it was valuable. And maybe they’re seeing a threat.”

“Those ships?”

“Maybe something’s heating up. Could be they’re here to offer something. I don’t know. Maybe they want to deal. When the giants want to dance, the

likes of us just stands and watches. Stations have their politics. For us, it’s just

survival. Some damn bureaucrat comes in with a sweetheart deal, Alpha

admin agrees—and we’re not a high consideration. We’re the little folk, we.”

Scary thought. Venture-Alpha was

Galway

’s territory, and

Galway,

though

no larger than

Little Bear,

was the largest ship plying the Venture to Alpha

routes, and barely breaking even. Pell-based ships deciding to run that route

would cut directly into

Galway

profits. The three here had already made a

minor stir in the luxury market just bringing in flour and oil and a small store

of rare earth metals. Why?

Why,

dammit. It didn’t make sense. A huge profit just wasn’t there. Alpha didn’t

produce

anything but data, science, and basic foodstuffs off its

tanks. Its hope was all

when Sol breaks out. Alpha-based ships ran the Great

Circle routes, to Bryant’s, to Glory, Alpha and Venture. Same rules, same

market system, same rights and laws, mostly. They got along, mostly. To

have

goods to trade, they had to get those from Sol. But if Pell wanted to change that ...

“What I bet,” Fallan said, “is that station’s not talkin’ because it doesn’t

have a plan yet. Something

came in on one of those stranger-ship’s feeds that

station’s been keepin’ to themselves, and now station’s takin’ their time telling

people what’s going on because they don’t friggin’

know

what they’re going

to do.”

Ship’s feed. The black boxes that talked, ship to station, the moment a ship

docked, station downloading to a departing ship before it left—a

comprehensive data-dump in both cases, every tick and blip of information,

civil and commercial and operational, discoveries and contracts,

actions and

intentions, births, deaths, publications, markets, and the state of supply. That

was one Cyteen rule that had come in with the gift of FTL, no ifs ands

or buts. Sped by ships, it was communication faster than the lightspeed

Stream that still connected Alpha to Sol, but that no one past Alpha even

thought about using anymore. Current prices of goods, as per the ship’s last

port, politics, news, entertainment ...

that black box data was a vital part of

every ship’s cargo. There were times it was

all

that paid for fueling and

sleepover. A big load of new information ...

getting there first could pay,

really pay. “Not much they can do, is there?” he asked. “They got to let that ship dock. And they pretty well got to let it suck up the station feed.”

That was a rule older than anything: a ship came in, you gave it a place to

dock. And how did they say no to a fourth ship, when three other outsiders

had come in and linked up?

“Stationer minds. The EC just doesn’t like to admit they’re not in control,”

Fallan said, and gave a near-silent rap on the counter, old superstition, older

than Fallan himself. “These visitors, they’ll dock and suck up all the data

Alpha’ll give ’em in the feed—she can squirm all she likes, but that data

will

feed out. Then these visitors will kite out to various interested places, but only

after

sharing what

they

know. So whatever’s going on out in the Beyond, Pell

doesn’t mind us knowing. But maybe the EC

does

mind sharing what they’ve

got. Whatever the first three outsiders brought in—you can bet station’s been

digesting that for days, and I’d wager something in there has admin really

sweating this incoming rig.”

A ship couldn’t read its own black box, had no idea what information had

streamed into it or out of it. Theoretically the station couldn’t tamper with

ships’ black boxes, either, or adjust what import/export and market statistics a

station automatically gave out. Station wasn’t supposed to censor elections or

published items, either, but that was a big theoretical, in Ross’s own

estimation. There wouldn’t possibly be details about

Rights

floating around in

Alpha’s feed—would there?

New flasher on the largest screen, the EC logo. Special bulletin, the vid

said, and this time it went to image, not just a crawl. Thanks to Fallan, they

two, Galways, held prime spots at the bar, as tables emptied and fellow

Galways and Santiagos and the insystem folk crowded close again. Ben Abrezio himself appeared on the screen. Stationmaster. White-haired,

ordinary-looking fellow. Executive authority. “We regret the need to reposition the two ships. We have confirmed the

identity of the incoming ship as

Finity’s End,

Pell registry.”

“Oh, my God,” was one murmur from up at the bar. And a distinct voice, mid-room:

“Bloody. Hell. This is really getting

worrisome.”

Ross’s own heart had skipped a beat. Finity’s End. Of all ships,

that

one. He caught a corner-eye look from Fallan, who raised a brow as if to say:

Told you so. And Fallan

had

called it: the outsider visitation

was

about

Rights. Finity’s End—

the monster hauler built by Pell and handed over to the

Neiharts of old

Gaia

—was a creature of the Farther Stars and the massive

payloads that traveled between those stations. A creature the likes of which

he’d never expected to set eyes on—except in the form of Alpha’s non-

operational copy parked at the top of A-mast. “Incoming event vid is released on channel 1, followed by the ship’s first V-

dump. Even following that dump, this ship is carrying an abnormally high

velocity, but we are assured it is safe, and, in point of fact, normal for this

ship. Mind the following vid is nearly four hours old. She will be braking

again in ten minutes, which we will broadcast live. She will be arriving at B-

13 at shift-change. Starting now we are issuing a station breach alert. All

persons should seek a designated shelter within ten minutes. There is no need

to run. Go to the nearest available. We are not worried, fellow citizens, but

she does not habitually mast-dock, and we’re simply taking sensible

precautions. We will have a further statement once she has docked safely.”

Rosie’s was a designated shelter. They

were

in a place with take-holds and

vacuum seals

should

the station take damage. That was saying nothing about their ships docked to the mast that speeding

monster was aimed at. Abrezio might have done

Qarib

and

Firenze

a favor,

moving them out, if a ship large as anything going was coming in too hot ...

a ship built for ring-docking that was going to attempt to dock at B-mast. “Station breach, hell.” Ross said. “They friggin’ comin’ in with a

mechanical, or what?

They can slow the fuck—”

The screen flashed up, showing a schematic, point of entry, velocity, and

timeclock. “What the hell?”

“Godamighty,” somebody said. Which under-described the numbers. Fast

didn’t begin to describe it. And still another voice:

“Three, four fuckin’ hours ago—

Where

are they right now?

Station’s

known about this for

four hours. They knew what was coming in?

Why the

hell

didn’t they tell us?”

“Shit!

That mother’s still haulin’ a quarter C. That’s got to be

close!

Shit-

all!”

“That

V’s

not real-time. Three hours ago!

Easy!”

V

-dump happened almost immediately on entry on automation and again

generally twice more, but that ship had come in beyond hot. He couldn’t

believe anything could dump that much, that fast. He hazarded a glance at

Fallan, saw

Galway

’s Nav 1 staring calmly at those numbers, and his heart

rate slowed. Fallan felt things in his gut in ways Ross didn’t ...

couldn’t ...

not yet. Fallan had watched it all, could run the jump numbers and place

himself at the nav boards without half trying. If Fallan thought it was okay ...

The blip vanished and reentered. Half the outrageous speed and a good

deal closer to Alpha still....

and his heart raced again. Half the speed and still too damn fast. “Shit,” he said, “is anybody alive on there?”

Did it again. Dammit, how could any mind take that kind of reality-warp and stay sane?

“Bot at helm, got to be,” someone said. “Or they’re fuckin’ showin’ off.” That from a Firenze. “Damn

them!”

Ross knew, rationally, that the mega-ships

weren’t

slower. Their oversized

engines threw a lot of energy into the interface. They reputedly did things

little ships didn’t. Couldn’t. His mind knew, but his nerves twitched. Reflexes trained for years said that

things should be done at certain intervals. A regular hauler could take

days

coming in this close. You got to system, you dumped

V

, you settled in for a

crew-change, drank stuff to settle your electrolytes and maybe had a

sandwich. You then went face down on your bunk to let next-shift talk to

station and the markets, all routine, plenty of time to do routine housekeeping

and clean-up before the pre-dock. Sensible. Polite!

Coming in at that rate didn’t give stationfolk the willies. Ross found himself gripping his beer mug white-knuckled. All they had for

comfort was a distorted-scale schematic on what was ordinarily the arrival

screen. They watched the numbers run, still damned fast. Another glance at

Fallan found the old man’s eyes on him now, rather than

on the readout. Fallan gave him that half-wink, a hint of a smile, before turning back to the

screen, and Ross’s hand relaxed. They can’t be hauling, Ross thought, trying to think, not react. No way

they were hauling. They couldn’t dump that much velocity at maximum mass. Not in real space. Not in time. And another part of him thought: God, what

was it to sit as crew on that creature, throwing energy off that, if thrown

toward station, would take them all out. Energy that, even slightly

misdirected, could make the sun itself quake and maybe toss an ugly lot of

mass. Spacetime healed itself. Had

healed itself, when it spat that monster out

into the nearest gravity well it could find. Plain old here-and-now space ...

was another matter. Rosie was still serving, still running tabs, all alcohol, nobody ordering

from the kitchen, and new people, strays from off the Strip, shouldered their

way to the bar and a view of the screens. Bodies pressed tight. Two

Rights

crew in blue uniforms, looking not much different from the blue-coated

station cops and about as welcome in Rosie’s, kept together, prudently, near

the door and not saying much, but watching the screen, the same as

everybody. Also among the incoming were a handful of late-come spacer types in

nondescript green and blue that were new to Rosie’s. “God,” somebody said, when new numbers flashed up and the blinking dot

kept coming, scarily close and still fast, by the run of those numbers on the

sidebar. One green and blue jacket said quietly, “She’s fine. No worry.”

That pronouncement got a dozen cold stares. “Who’re you?” a Santiago

asked. The jam was close, the lights were dim. Sleeve patches weren’t that

clear, and the vid was delivering background chatter. The man who’d spoken

had Asia somewhere in the ancestry, a ship-accent unfamiliar to Alpha. There were six of them in that dull green. “Little Bear,”

the speaker said in accented Standard. “Wrong bar,” Santiago said. “Out!”

“We’re under a shelter order,” Fallan said. “Give ’em grace, ’Rique.”

“They can keep quiet,” Santiago said. “We got a damn fool headed at us.”

“Only way,” another Little Bear said, “in a small system like this, that’s

how the big ones come out. Deep in the well. No way not. But don’t worry. JR ...

he’s as good as they come.”

“The hell!” someone shouted. “Friggin’ James Robert Neihart’s no

different from the rest of us mortals, and that fuckin’ ship’s comin’ in with

hell on its tail.”

JR. James Robert Neihart. Finity’s

Senior Captain. Like his ship, a legend

before he was thirty. A legend named

after

a legend—the first ever starship’s

first captain—a man bumped straight to Senior Captain of the newly

commissioned mega-ship, because he’d been just that much faster, that much

better than those technically seeded ahead of him. A part of Ross’s brain meanwhile wondered if the Little Bear was right,

that this was

how

the big ships would have to come in, and his mind began to

run the numbers, and felt a shiver just figuring the mass. Then he thought

about the sim-trained

Rights

crew coming in like that and went icy cold. “Maybe we know, all right,” the first Little Bear began, and another Little

Bear raised a hand to stop him. “Station order says go to shelter. So we come in where first we could. Didn’t have a sign out there saying who owns this bar.”

“We

own it,” a Firenze woman said. “And we’re full up. So take your

business elsewhere.”

“And get a red ticket out there?

No, thanks, Alpha. Station calls a stupid

take-hold, we take hold, so back off.”

“What are any of you here for, anyway?” New voice in the argument,

another Firenze

,

male. “One of your ships is an all-right, okay, no problem,

two’s a coincidence, but three and now

this?

What in hell’s going on?”

“Come on,” another Little Bear said, taking the first by the arm. “This

take-hold’s nonsense in the first place. Let’s just go.”

“Running?” Santiago asked. “Like hell!” First Little Bear took a pose. Just as the vid changed display and showed real-time, vid from the mast. “Hold, hold, hold!” Fallan said, and interposed an arm. “We got realtime

up, here. Lay off!

They can’t go out there!

Vid is up—we got image, here!”

Attention swung to the screen. For the first time the vid focused on a ship

still moving fast. “Damn!” Ross breathed. Reason

for the take-hold. The image came like a

nightmare. “They brake,” one of the

Little Bear

crew said, a calm voice. “They

brake.”

And right then the image whited out, ghostlike. And reappeared closer. When the camera found focus again,

Finity’s End

appeared moving sanely

as any ship, by the numbers on the side. “Told you,” Little Bear said. “About three more hours to dock. Everything

fine.”

“You smug sumbitch,” Santiago said. “Out!”

It stung, that

told you,

from another small-ship FTLer, from one of the

visitors who’d piled up over the last few days ...

a visitor who, contrary to

report, suddenly spoke perfectly adequate Standard. And as quick as the thought, somebody at the bar had bumped somebody

and somebody had shoved back. Barware flew—and bounced. Rosie’s stocked plastic mugs, not glass. Beer

spattered, a plate hit the floor, and the whole bar became a heaving mass of

bodies bent on ejecting the outsiders, who were bent on resisting. Ross had his own inclinations, but Fallan was by him, and Fallan was too

old and brittle for what came next, which was short lengths of roller chain out

of pockets and blood mixing with the beer. “Fal,” Ross said, heaved himself atop the bar, sitting, and helped Fallan up

and over. Rosie himself, who massed about a hundred thirty kilos, braced

himself between wall and bar, trying to keep the bar from being rocked off its

bolts. No need to call the blue-coats. Two of them, those two

Rights

men, were

already in the bar, involved in the mess. It was sure enough more were on the

way; and equally sure other crews were getting the word same as the blue-

coats. Without warning, the overhead lights started flashing, the door pressure-

sealed itself, and the public address said:

“You will cease and desist

immediately. The door will open only when the incident stops. At that time,

officers will be at the door to take complaints.”

“Hell,” Fallan said. “Damned fools.”

Worse, they were upset fools. Real upset, not just at the insult, but at

everything that had been going on, ever. Sol had built Alpha to be its

connection to the stars, and Alpha was being left behind,

laughed

at because

of a ship built on stolen plans that not only couldn’t do what that outsider ship

was doing, it couldn’t even leave dock without a tug. But

Rights

wasn’t Alpha’s ship, not the way

Galway

and the others were. Rights

was a newcomer. The others had history, had been loyal to Alpha, kept

it alive. They deserved, dammit, respect. Hell, Ross thought, Alpha was still as fine a place as the First Stars had. Maybe not as big as Venture and its high ambitions, but still, Alpha was

how

Sol goods got anywhere, the sole link to the pushers. Alpha still had a lot of

people. Goods moved to here and from here. They

had

a commerce here. They

had

a value to the universe. For now. And that was the true pain every spacer here felt. Because all that

would change the day they found viable jump points to Sol—and if the

useable point lay between Sol and Alpha, Alpha would survive. If it did not, if

they found a jump-point that bypassed Alpha, to, say, Bryant’s or Venture,

Alpha would become just one more isolated, insignificant First Star station,

fading fast and doomed. Feast or famine, life or death ...

and it could happen

tomorrow, or a hundred years from now. It was scary, and Ross wasn’t immune from the feeling that ship out there

brought. The sense of being left behind, of being mocked for being loyal and

honorable to the system that had made their lives possible. If not for Fallan’s

presence to restrain him, he feared he’d be just one more damned fool. The chaos slowed, sorted itself out. The chains disappeared into pockets,

and shouts became narrow-eyed glares. The blue-coats inside managed

contact with blue-coats outside, and—finally—they began opening the doors. “

Galway

’s innocent,” Rosie muttered, standing beside them. “Onliest

action from the Galways out there was trying to get to you two, and we got

the

Rights

guys to witness it. Just stand pat till the blue-boys sort it out. You

all right, Fallan?”

“Fine,” Fallan said, but he was hurting a bit. Ross could tell, no matter

Fallan was good at masking it. Fallan bruised easily—he’d probably gotten

any number of bruises, being dragged across the bar, and Ross was sorry for

that, sorry, and damned mad about it. You talked about the glory days, about

the pusher-ships, and that was

Galway’

s Nav 1,

his

Nav 1.

Fallan Monahan

was off the old pusher

Atlas

, whose steel and fiber was the bones of

Santiago

and

Qarib. Fallan had seen it all come down, and he was damned good,

damned

good at his post. Best navigator in the Great Circle,

including

whatever attitudinal ass was bringing that monster ship in too damned fast. Fallan didn’t deserve to see Alpha disrespected by outsiders bent on God-

knew-what business. But there wasn’t a damned thing to do about it. Bottles had gotten knocked down. Empties had bounced all over the place. Somebody was going to get the bill. There’d be charges for cleanup and

business interruption sent to every ship present. Ought to be a big one sent to

Finity’s End,

as Ross Monahan saw it. A really ...

really

big bill. Section ii

Chapter 1

“I said

no citations

, sergeant,” Stationmaster Ben Abrezio stared across his

desk at his two unwanted visitors. Got a grudging nod from Hewitt as he

talked to an enforcer on the scene. “Everyone’s

upset, with good reason. Once

it’s quiet, just let them out. Your chief is here with me and he concurs.”

Assent from the far end of the com, and Abrezio sat back in his padded

chair, trying not to show his concern. Alpha was under attack—not armed attack, but it was a message they were

getting from Pell, no doubting it, and the repercussions had already begun. Andrew J. Cruz, Vice Admiral Andrew Cruz, Director of the EC’s mega-

ship project, had messaged concern when the second Farther Stars ship had

come into system. Cruz had phoned in that concern when

Mumtaz

had

arrived, making it three such ships docked at Alpha. And Cruz had blazed a fast passage around to EC offices when they’d

gotten the wavefront of

Finity’s End

entering system. His own fault, Abrezio supposed. He himself had panicked. He couldn’t

deny it. But for good reason. For two agonizing minutes they hadn’t

known

what had entered, just that it was unexpected and

large—

and coming in on the

FTL zenith vector with a hellish mass. He’d sent that initial data to Cruz,

along with the emergency code that

should

have had Cruz and all

Rights

ops

crew headed up the mast for

Rights

, prepping for possible evacuation of

citizens. Instead, before that next wavefront had brought them

Finity’s

ID, he’d had

not only Cruz, but Cruz’s second in command, Project Security Chief Enzio

Hewitt, at his office door, Cruz demanding entry,

demanding

details directly

from him, and Hewitt suggesting they all just calm down—

damn

the man’s

arrogance—and shut down access to station control points. Hell if!

Only a fool cut off all his escape routes. But these two didn’t think that way, not even after years of station living. Sol-system born, both of them—hell, Cruz could trace back to the first

generation on EC’s precious number one: Earth-bound Sol Station itself. Worse, both had been

personally

appointed

by the head office to

handle

anything and everything that had to do with

Rights. Endorsement like that

created at-ti-tude. Not to mention competition within their own elite position. Hewitt, latest come and determinedly staking out his territory, had pushed to

extend his administrative functions outside A-mast and onto the Strip, as the

place where ships’ crews could get rowdy and “foreign influence” could slip

in. Endorsement notwithstanding, neither of these silver spooners had any

inkling what kind of nerves were involved in what was happening right now. Sitting where Alpha did, near mysteriously abandoned Beta, at the mere

mention of which spacers knocked on whatever was available and made

whoever had mentioned the unlucky name go out of the room and come back

again—Alpha had reason to dislike inbound anomalies. Like strange ships entering system with off-the-chart numbers. Rights of Man

might have spent most of her life docked on A-mast, but she

was

crewed, she had had a shakedown, they

thought

they had identified the

problem that had caused a premature end to that run, and she

could

launch—

at least in-system—if she had to. The plan was, as Cruz damn-well knew, that

if they saw anything,

anything,

that looked like doomsday arriving, they were

to cram everybody they could into

The

Rights of Man

and run like hell for

Bryant’s,

hoping

that navigator and helm got it right this time and the FTL

engines didn’t shut down or blow at their first real test. That measure wasn’t the Earth Company’s order. It was Ben Abrezio’s. Key personnel knew there was an outright evac notice ready and waiting to

send at the push of a button, in a determination not to have his people end

up ...

gone

, the way Beta’s had disappeared. In Abrezio’s mind, in his

occasional nightmares in this job, it was how he would leave this station—just

load everybody on and jump for the nearest best hope—Bryant’s Star. As happened, it hadn’t been necessary. This time. Next time ...

next time

the general alarm rang, if Cruz showed up in his office instead of on

Rights ...

damned if he wouldn’t have the man arrested and abandoned on

the station for whatever spook wanted him. Fifteen minutes,

fifteen damned minutes

of heart-racing alarm before that

leviathan had announced herself as a known ship who didn’t damnwell belong

here, a ship coming in hot—so damned hot he had, for the last half hour, still

seriously considered issuing that evacuation notice. But Andy Cruz—after consulting with Hewitt, who had watched the

telemetry in his office with great interest—had assured him it was within

parameters, barely, and made it clear he had no intention of leaving this

office, let alone evacuating. Arrogant. But Cruz’s attitude was nothing, really, to Hewitt’s, who’d

waltzed off

Santa Maria

seven years ago, and, EC orders in hand, ordered A-

mast cleared and

Rights

to be brought into dock, as he assumed control of A-

mast security, Strip security, and any other damn thing he’d decided might

impact the safety of the

Rights

project. Hewitt hadn’t usurped Andy Cruz, oh

no. He was just there to support Cruz, who was head of the project and

administrator. Procuring materials, equipment, personnel and resources ...

Cruz did that very well. No, Hewitt’s ambitions lay elsewhere and Abrezio wondered, at times like

this, did Cruz appreciate that?

Hewitt had trained as helm on FTL sims all the

way from Sol. Not enough to qualify him for a license: sims were sims, and

they

had

none for a mega-ship like

Rights—

or

Finity’s End. But ten years of

sims had given Hewitt operational knowledge, knowledge he was

more

than

happy to spread around, and now they had Hewitt lecturing Cruz on the

physics of their small red star and bowshocks, and just how close that ship

could

cut it. Hard to tell how Cruz actually felt about that not-always-requested input. Cruz

had

sent Hewitt on the training voyage, in which

Rights

crew shadowed

the boards of little

Qarib

to get realtime jump experience—which none of the

trainees nor Hewitt himself had ever had, the former never having traveled

anywhere outside the system, and Hewitt having come in on a pusher. One

had to wonder, in retrospect: had that choice been calculated to bring Hewitt

down a notch?

Because it had not been a happy voyage, and Aki Rahman, captain of

Qarib,

had flatly said, Never again. Cruz, meanwhile, had used the months of Hewitt’s absence to make

changes in operations, changes Hewitt was

still

trying to roll back to

his

rules. And Hewitt had been

vastly

put out when

Rights’

problem-ridden shakedown

cruise had

not

included the Project Security Chief. Cruz had taken personal

control of that one—

after

ensuring a similar restructuring of protocols could

not take place in his absence. And all this accumulated discord was parked in

his

office as a whole new

problem arrived—this one from Pell Station, on the far side of EC-controlled

space, beyond which, past Pell’s few daughter stations, lay Cyteen, as great a

threat to human civilization as any in history. Cyteen, who ran where it liked,

did what it liked, and had no love at all for Mother Earth or Sol or anything

the Company had to offer. The problems that could be incoming with these

Pell-based ships, whose

declared

business was just trade—were myriad, and

on those problems—no, Enzio Hewitt was

not

the expert. The very identification of the arriving ship represented a serious concern,

all on its own. A damned legend arriving without warning—a ship with which

this station and the EC had specific and notorious history. Damn those plans. Damn the EC’s obsession that had turned his entire career into a logistical

nightmare. This after a week of outsider arrivals, who declared their business

was just trade. Ben Abrezio poured a short midday Scotch and offered it to Andy Cruz,

who declined it, being technically on duty. So was Ben Abrezio on duty, but

they were a long way from other authority, and

Finity’s

last braking had been

—

Well, not the final straw, but something damned close. Granted that ship’s

bowshock didn’t wreck them all, he’d bet it brought a shitload of other

problems to cap a week of coincidental arrivals. At the very least, it meant

hundreds more people flooding an already over-taxed station that rarely saw

more than two or three ships in port at once. Just recycling was going to be a

nightmare. Any ship would be a logistical problem, but to have

Finity

, of all

ships, come crashing in, scaring hell out of him and his station ...

Not to mention the psychological effects that entry could have on the

Rights of Man

ops crew, whose confidence might well be the intended target

of this entry. A Family crew shoving the reality of their stolen ship design

down their sim-trained gullets. Damned if his nerves hadn’t earned a dram of single malt. He took up his glass ...

froze at a grunt from Hewitt, who had

momentarily found something of greater interest to him than

Finity’s

telemetry. Abrezio handed the original snifter to Hewitt, poured a second ...

not

short ...

for himself, then returned the bottle to the cabinet and thumbed

the lock, Hewitt having an unpleasant habit of helping himself to expensive

seconds, damn the man. “I’m going to continue the shelter order until that ship’s done whatever it’s

going to do,” Abrezio said. “Where does it think we’re going to put it?”

“No way it goes on A-mast,” Hewitt said. “That lot won’t be allowed

anywhere near that ship.”

Idiot. “Never considered it,” Abrezio said, trying hard not to patronize. “Mass

distribution. I’ve ordered the end of B cleared, but can it even dock here?”

“Should be possible,” Cruz said, and, having poured himself a cup of black

coffee, continued calmly: “Obviously

Rights

can. It was in the design, of

which that ship out there is the prototype. I’m far more concerned about that

approach. It’s

not

standard by anything we know. Nothing in

any of our

records supports it. We have no idea what she intends, coming in that close

and that fast.”

“That’s obvious,” Hewitt said. “They’re showing out. And since they’ve

been so up front with their demonstration, I want that telemetry worked into

the sims, thank you very much.”

“If we can,” Cruz said. “I’m not hearing

if. I want the vid preserved, I want the numbers preserved,

I want an analysis, and I want

Rights

crew running the revised sims with the

last three hours fresh in their minds. Decision-making on the far side of jump

isn’t easy. This

is what this design can do, all-out. This

is realtime. This is

current. This is something we have to match. Something we

will

match.”

Hewitt tossed back the Scotch as if it was shots on Strip-side, and turned

back to the readout. “I’m sure ops is recording,” Abrezio stared at that screen, watching the

numbers, sipping his own glass. “It’s standard procedure.” Hewitt was talking

about physics. He

was thinking about the psychology of it. The deliberate,

potentially debilitating psychology of it. “Hell of a risk, no matter how you

look at it.”

“Finity’s End

was the first of her kind,” Cruz said. “And they probably still

update her manual. Neihart undoubtedly tests her limits regularly, off the

record, maybe at unregistered jump-points we’d like to know more about.”

“Outright

given

a ship like this,” Hewitt said. “

What

did the Neiharts pay?

That’s what I ask. What

did they pay?”

“They were

Gaia’s

crew

,”

Cruz said with a shrug. “They used

Gaia’s

core

when they built that ship. That name’s downright royalty to this lot.”

“Royalty?

Crew that disobeyed orders on its very first mission?

Crew that

refused to step down and hand the ship back over to the rightful owners?

Not

my idea of royal blood. And the attitude’s still there, isn’t it?” Hewitt lifted

his glass suggestively, Abrezio pretended not to notice, and Hewitt set the

glass down with rather more force than necessary. “Back at Sol, they aren’t so

reverential about the Neiharts. Tin gods, ship and crew. Besides, these are the

whatever-degree grandchildren and genetic amalgamation with God-knows-

what ships. Nothing in common with the originals. Nothing. ”

Not a fan of the Family ships ...

Hewitt had made that clear within hours

of his arrival at Alpha, and Abrezio had learned not to fight it. But out here, to Family ships and stations alike, it

was

legend how the first

starship crew, more than a quarter of a century on their initial round

trip, had

defied the birth ban on the way out and then defied the Company order to

stand down and surrender

Gaia

to a new crew when they returned to Sol. The

Neiharts—another James Robert Neihart in command—had told the Earth

Company go build them another ship. This one was their home and they were

keeping it. Gaia

had made the loop back to Alpha, which they’d founded. And kept

doing it, decade after decade, Alpha’s first pusher, Alpha’s life source, all

those centuries ago, before FTL had come along and changed everything. “

Original

crew on the

original

pusher,” Surprisingly, Cruz stepped in. “This ship—the Neihart name—do matter out here, Mr. Hewitt. It’s

something you have yet to fully comprehend, and something you had best

keep in mind for as long as that ship is in port.”

Or perhaps not surprisingly. Original. As Cruz himself was “original.”

Sol

original, descended directly from the first Sol station admin, a fact Cruz

managed to drop on anyone he met, and definitely held over Hewitt. That was

its own variety of aristocracy—originals traced things like that. Sol originals got entrusted with important projects. Originals knew other

originals, contacts upon contacts, insider ways of getting things done. At least

back at Sol. Coming up through the ranks of Sol Station, Hewitt had been a newcomer,

a man without antecedents, pushing himself forward, grabbing every

handhold he could get. He’d arrived at Alpha thinking his Sol origins alone

would mean something, only to discover it didn’t work here, where everyone

had to prove their worth. And Hewitt’s face said he was

not

happy with Cruz’s reminder of his less

than spectacular connections back at Sol, but for once Hewitt kept quiet. Abrezio held his own peace. Cruz had it wrong as well. Time was, original

had

meant something out here at Alpha. Time was,

common stationers, folks who’d come out to Alpha and Glory on the

fifteenth, twentieth run—after all the hard and dangerous work was done—

had a hard time of it. No one used terms like second class, but it had

amounted to the same thing. But that prejudice ennobling the first-arrived had

died out long ago. His own ancestry traced back to Abrezios on that same first

trip on

Gaia. His ancestors had been pioneers in discovery. But generations

on, so could everyone else born on Alpha Station these days claim a similar

link. On the other hand, those born out here did maintain a serious reverence for

the old pushers, and stations kept the ancient bargain with the

two pusher-

ships that still served, who not only maintained Alpha’s contact with Sol, but

with the past as well. And as the first of all pusher-ships,

Gaia

was more than just an Original. Far more. The name James Robert Neihart, the captain of the mission that had

founded Alpha,

happened

to be on a plaque in the heart of station ops. On

stations from here to Pell, where the old ship had finally been broken down,

Gaia

and the Neihart name

did

mean something. A whole lot of Something. Something Cruz, sitting there all relaxed and expecting his contacts back at

Sol to work and his name to mean something wherever he went, would

discover soon enough. Cruz would expect a certain acknowledgment from the

crew of the incoming ship. Question was whether the high and mighty

Neiharts would know who Cruz was, and who

his

family had been—or give a

damn if they did. “I don’t care who they are,” Hewitt said into the protracted silence. “Doesn’t mean they don’t still owe the station that built that ship and handed

it over to them, and

that’s

Pell. They’re working for the Konstantins, don’t

think they aren’t. Here they are, making that splashy entrance, not sending ID

for fifteen damn minutes. Sure, they got the attention they wanted. Everybody

saw. Everybody watched in awe. This

is the revelation. Pell’s

challenging

us.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Abrezio said. Pell’s very existence challenged

everything remotely EC. Pell was where the star-stations had changed. Pell

was the first of several stations founded on a breakaway operation, with

stealth, ambition, and outright defiance of EC authority. Pell was the point

beyond which stationmasters were not EC. Pell had its own Family, the

Konstantins, who had run Pell Station from its beginnings, same way the

Carnaths and Emorys ran Cyteen. Attitude. Any and all contact with Pell reeked of it. Attitude that would not

change until Sol entered the FTL age and arrived, personally, to inform the

Konstantins—and perhaps even Cyteen—there were still older powers in the

universe. A momentous occasion that might be closer than most people thought. “So?” Cruz said, eyes on the schematic. “You’re going to confront

that

ship

with EC rules?

We haven’t pushed points with the first three outsiders to

arrive here. I

really

wouldn’t recommend starting with this one.”

“Hell, yes, they’ll toe the—”

“We’ll

deal with them,” Abrezio said. “We’ll need to put a right spin on

whatever they want, reassure the citizens. That’s paramount. I’ll call a

personnel meeting and brief the departments. I’m assuming at this point

that it

can and will mast dock and that we’re going to have to accommodate that

crew on the Strip. Somehow. I’ve already taken the preliminary steps. We’ll

take this unannounced arrival as a diplomatic approach. Maybe a trade

opportunity. Regardless, Mr. Hewitt, until something different develops, we

will

need security to keep a quiet and

optimistic

profile. No

incidents. No

incidents with these outsiders. It seems likely Pell

is

challenging us. So

they’ve just put on their show. Fine. We’ll applaud politely and move on. But

the fact is, they’ve

also

just demonstrated to everybody on Alpha what

Rights

can be once she’s in operation. Perhaps we should thank them as well. Either

way, we’ll

welcome

these visitors same as any ship, and remind them about

something they might have forgotten: this is where Sol meets the rest of

space, and Pell

needs

the First Stars on their side as much as they ever did. Section iii

Otherwise, sooner or later, Pell will find itself face to face with Cyteen

expansionism all on their own, and they really won’t want that. It’s even

possible these ships are here because Pell sees such a move coming and wants

to ensure its position in the human political scheme.”

“You think so?” Clearly Hewitt didn’t believe it. “Match Cyteen’s manpower?

No. Pell can’t. But

Sol

can. Match Cyteen’s

resources?

Near-term, yes,

Sol

can. And damn right Sol

will

get here, and the

game

will

change. Pell may be thinking of that, too.”

“You go right on kidding yourself.” Hewitt jerked to his feet and headed

for the door. “I’m going over to Central Ops and make sure we preserve that

data.”

“Do that,” Abrezio said, glad to see the back of him. Hewitt left. Cruz let go a deep breath, with a glance at the closing door,

then said, with clear exasperation, “I’ll take that scotch, now, Stationmaster, if

you don’t mind.”

Chapter 1

They’d come in fast and deep in the gravity well. And arriving at zenith of Barnard’s Star, an unstable red dwarf that could

choose that moment to misbehave, they’d taken no chances. Finity

had a

policy—no lingering in the jump zone in such a system, no handoff

to next

shift until they’d dumped

V

if there was no traffic restriction. Senior Captain

and Helm 1 took her down all the way to a still-brisk traveling speed, flared

off more

V

and crossed an ungodly lot of space doing it. There was not the development and traffic here at Alpha that there was at

Venture, no question of hitting anything on their entry heading, and with each

V

-dump, they angled toward the only manmade structure there

was

here at

Alpha, until they were on course. They still needed to do another small

V

-

dump, but that was for fourth-shift. First-shift took over the step-down lounge, a vast long cavern of a

compartment where bulkheads and take-holds and net rigging were the decor,

and where they could draw breath and get real food, could settle nerves that

were still operating at hyperspeeds. Here they could be on call, but with hands

off controls. They could watch telemetry and image, now, and get station

transmissions. They had a good view. They’d kept scan and longscan busy from

V

-dump

on, getting the feel of the place, confirming that Alpha

was

as simple and

basic as its reputation. They looked closely, because the whole station was

EC-run, and because there was, as expected, the apparent sole occupant of the

A-mast, a ship outwardly very like their own—at least in terms of size. They’d seen that ship before, but only in vids. That ship

was one of their

problems: the ship and the reasoning under which it had been built. Sol’s

attempt to escape its pusher-prison, perhaps. There’d been that extravagant

claim of a plus-seven-light jump early in the planning of

Finity’s End

and

Dublin

alike. But that had been a bit of over-sell:

Finity

couldn’t do it, and

Captain JR Neihart knew it for a fact. Finity

could jump further than other

ships—how far they

thought

it could jump was not information they shared

about—but no ship yet built could one-hop it from Alpha to Sol. Yet Sol kept building its own mega-ship, perhaps refusing to accept reality,

perhaps with altered purpose. If escaping the well were their only goal, they

could have built that ship at Sol with far less trouble and expense. That ship out there, constructed from stolen plans, lacked

Finity’s

extensive

post-trial refinements—Pell’s heightened security had made certain of that. JR

was relatively sure Alpha was aware now that running a ship this size was no

easy walkover. Rumor said the ship had glitched on an easy jump for

Bryant’s, and the crew was lucky to be in one piece. It wasn’t worth a laugh:

it was too serious a thing, too great a risk of converting ship and personnel

into a plasma stream headed nowhere. Or bow-shocking Bryant’s Star into an

outburst as extreme energy plowed into that red dwarf sun. From the moment Cyteen had spread the wealth of FTL for everyone, Sol

had had a problem. A big one. Sol was not only an awkward just-out-of-reach

gravity well, it had a great abundance of orbiting bodies—too great an

abundance. In its multi-billion year career, it had pulled a lot of meaningful

mass into its well—a vast cloud of unused and stolen bits that presented a

major traffic hazard to any incoming ship. But sooner or later Sol

would

find a way, and the decision that made Alpha

undertake to build a ship to match

Finity’s End

was going to play out to its

conclusion. Sooner or later, some ship would find a way to Sol. Sooner or

later a jump-point would be discovered or some engineer would find some

way to tweak the field so a seven-light jump

would

be possible. Change was

the rule, not the exception, when it came to technology. In the meantime, from reports, the only real use Sol was getting out of the

immense build was keeping its nearest stepping-stone running and

maintaining a contact with civilization past Alpha. Alpha could reach

one

other station, Bryant’s, by FTL; it could reach Sol by pusher-ship; and

continuing that build provided jobs and kept the Earth Company in touch with

points beyond, with EC offices on Bryant’s, Glory, Venture, and marginally

on Pell. So the ship had

some

function. And

if

it could solve its problem and go

translight, it might be useful locally, but only at the expense of other ships

that served the station, which couldn’t make local ships happy. As the

extended situation, decades of build, with all available resources being sucked

into the project, couldn’t make the station happy. By all reports, the station

was neglecting repairs, calling

optional

items that might impact health and

well-being, and was in general on the decline, right along with Glory, off in

its own bag-end of nowhere. But—viable or not, building that pilfered ship

had provided a lot of jobs, an artificially inflated economy fed by Sol so long

as construction lasted. The EC was still big here. And now, winding down the construction phase, the project was offering

other jobs, and handing out uniforms. Training crew—lots of crew—stationer

crew—on sims. That

was a problem. Would it have been better just to have multiple pushers coming with

consumable goods, to keep following the age-old EC pattern of paying their

stations with vital supply?

Sol and its two operating pushers were in direct

competition with Pell on that score, and they couldn’t possibly win. One year

versus ten years to fill a need—when Pell could manufacture local biostuffs

into edibility for humans and have regular shipments moving out to the

Hinder Stars and elsewhere. Not the exotic variety of

product Sol could

provide, but even that was changing. It was amazing what the food engineers

could do with what Pell’s world produced. The Hinder Stars, the stars left

behind in mankind’s outward push, needed supply Sol was failing to give

them. Goods moved. Pell prospered. The Hinder Stars were fed, supplied, and

alive. 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

Finity

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, they 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. Alpha’s engineers, no matter how competent, had never, ever built an

FTLer, let alone something like

Finity. Alpha couldn’t begin to match the

experience of Pell’s best, and considering that aborted first run ...

Truth was, the theft, while Pell used the incident to give itself a few years

without a well-staffed EC presence on the station, just had not been that

troubling. JR actually suspected Pell security of setting the whole thing up to

give Pell an excuse to boot the EC office and allow them back again only on

condition. The policy all along had been to give the FTL tech to Sol—for

exactly the reasons Cyteen, who had built the first FTL engines, had sent the

design to Pell. Do what you can with it when you can. Let’s have trade, not

war. Well, yes, all the while knowing they were cutting Sol out of the picture,

because in the plans and data Cyteen had sent to Pell, and that Pell had sent to

Sol, the map of jump points didn’t extend beyond Venture. Cyteen was nothing if not forward thinking. The jump limit for the smaller-scale FTLers was about 4.69 lightyears, in

safety, give or take relative motion, a major issue; and the Hinder Stars

beyond Venture all lay at a convenient three and four lights from each other. Venture itself was too far from Pell to single-hop ...

but there was an

intervening point at 3.7 lights, a nice, safe, clean point of mass that for the

next, oh, ten thousand years, would be comfortably within small-ship range. So there was traffic all the way to Alpha, though most of Alpha’s shipping

was just a hop from Bryant’s to Glory, Glory to Bryant’s to Alpha, old places,

old sub-lighter routes. The direct Glory-to-Alpha run was a shade too far for

Alpha’s ships. Finity

might do it,

Dublin

might, and

Rights of Man

might

make it, if it was ever more than an ornament, but there was hardly profit to

be had there. Glory was moribund, a drain on Alpha’s resources, and with no

station reachable but Bryant’s and haunted Beta. That was the crux of things. Within the scheme of FTL trade, the Hinder

Stars were dying. The old trade with Sol was sustenance from Sol in return

for labor on the station and information sent back; and

gradually, shorting

themselves on luxuries from Sol had given the Hinder Stars something to

trade with the Beyond markets, which functioned far more directly on

exchange of goods. Now ...

even that little trade was gone. Everything that

came in from Sol funneled straight into that ship. Rights of Man

had cost

Alpha too much, way too much for a display project. It was a good bet Sol,

which had the materials

and

the design, was doing its best to get out of its

bottle with a sizeable and authoritarian EC presence. But so far, it wasn’t working. For the ships that depended on the Hinder Star trade, FTL from Alpha to

Sol could be the answer to their prayers. Direct, on-demand trade for raw

materials that could be turned, by the local creative types, into station-specific

trade items ...

the way it worked in the Beyond ...

that could be the saving

of the Hinder Stars, both stations and merchanters. Alpha could go from

outermost of the Hinder Stars to main gateway to Sol. Presupposing the EC let it happen. That ...

was the underlying question. Where it came to regulating authority and policy-setting, the EC

was

Sol. When the EC could get here in a timely manner, with ships and personnel to

back their demands ...

well ...

the star-stations beyond Alpha just had to be

ready to maintain their own positions, that was what. The question was ...

just how loyal were the locals of this key system to the Earth Company that

claimed to own them?

If the EC at Sol was building FTL ships on a more sensible scale, and

working up sims to crew them—how long would it be before the fools that

populated EC boardrooms at Sol ran out of patience, decided that it must be

safe by now, and tried the one sure route: Beta Station, over at Proxima?

That

was the truly worrisome thought in the minds of those whose business it was

to worry about Sol’s moves. Proxima, at a remove of slightly more than 4

lights from Sol,

was

reachable even by a small FTL—while Alpha, at

something closer to 6, was not. A ship from Sol could hop to Beta,

then

to

Glory, following the old pusher route, but that was

not

a route anybody

wanted Sol to take. No one,

no one

remotely in their right mind, would tempt

the region of space around Beta. An entire station emptied of people virtually

overnight, without a hint of the reason?

No. Whatever lurked there was best

left alone. That route was a no-go. But no one had ever accused EC Central as being in their right mind where

it came to corporate power and infighting. There was another possibility, almost as unthinkable. One had to wonder if

the problems

Rights

had encountered were not due to design

changes made by

engineers under pressure from Sol to scale up to a six-light jump, exceeding

Finity’s

jump capability with a lighter mass ship. And that was ...

insanity,

pure and simple. A ship in jump accelerated. The longer it was in jump, the

greater the energy—essentially borrowed mass—you had to throw off on exit. Exceed what your target point of mass could pull down?

Exceed what you

could then throw off?

No. Not a good idea. And the farther you jumped, and the bigger the energy you could throw,

little factors became bigger ones. The bowshock was massive. You ran a risk

of a less stable star—like the Hinder Stars in general—spitting back. Alpha’s

red dwarf star was that sort, which was

why

they’d skipped out a bit further

on entry, and fast. The potential effect of a hyper-accelerated ship entering a

thickly populated and developed system like Sol was inconceivable. Better,

far

better, to have Sol as the tail end of a relatively short hop. All in all, Sol appeared at least to acknowledge the dangers so far. So far,

contact with Sol—through the EC offices on the various Hinder Star stations

—was still friendly, still cooperative. Of

course

Pell wanted to see Sol solve

its problem. Of course probes would be launched from Pell, hunting for that

all-important jump point. Of course if they discovered it, they would share. Absolutely. It took years to have a complete lightspeed conversation, but yes,

of course, they were concerned. They’d get right back to you. Feed Sol information, that was Pell’s tactic. Feed them. Talk to them. Make

them feel they were still a part of things. Assure them that no, Cyteen was not

at this point a threat, but Pell was keeping a watchful eye on them. Had those probes truly been deployed?

Not his problem, though Emilio

Konstantin, Pell’s stationmaster, would be a fool to risk being caught in a lie. Pell’s future depended on trade and peace and cooperation with the stations

closest, and on their expertise in a region Sol had no way to understand. A

probe or two in Sol’s direction would be a small price to pay. So one could call that ship on A-mast a return message from the EC. We’re

coming. One way or another, Sol was going to arrive and inject its own orders

into the situation, and every station, every ship, every planet would do well to

be prepared. A message named

Rights of Man

, with its unreasonably large crew and

limited cargo space. Not an autonomous, generations-deep family such as

Finity

had, or that ran any other cargo-moving FTL going, but a handful

of

imported officers from Sol and a mass of jobless stationers grateful for the

steady paycheck. The EC intended to break the Family ship tradition. That ...

was the second truly ominous message being sent by

The Rights of Man. Even Cyteen respected the capital-f Families that had grown up on the old

pushers: eleven original Families that had fissioned into sixty-three, and more

if one counted the secondaries. If goods moved even in Cyteen’s space, it

used those same sixty-three ships. Family ships that could talk to other

Families, that could make sense to each other for reasons grounded in trade

and common necessities and shared knowledge. The Families had begun with small populations destined for decades of

isolation in the sub-lighters. With FTL a reality, a ship-Family meant the

common experience of people who

knew

what it meant to lose contact with

reality and return again, ready to make life and death hindbrain decisions. Time passed differently for them, and station years and station politics were

just irrelevant to shipboard lives. They were the only ones who lived

exactly

in their time: everybody else—did not. Now the EC, who had resented the Families since

Gaia’s

crew had refused

to give her up, was going to entrust that expensive monster,

Finity’s

unrefined

cousin, to a bunch of sim-trained stationers who had no experience in deep

space at all. Never mind the insult to the handful of ship-Families who had remained

loyal to Alpha, who had kept the Hinder Stars alive for decades. Never mind

the neglect those Families’ ships had had to endure because of the priorities

given to

that

ship. There’d be no link for

Rights

into the web of connections

and shared history that informed and connected every other ship this side of

Cyteen. Rights

was the property of the EC, and anyone who thought the EC

would stop at one ship ...

was a fool. So now the universe had

this

huge creature ready to back EC notions that

an EC committee could issue orders and policies and make it all work. Of

course a committee could hire a stationer crew and train them in a few months

to do what the Families had selected and trained to do for generations. It had been possible for everybody in deep space to ignore EC’s ideas so

long as it had taken over a decade to exchange messages that were ultimately

irrelevant to each other. Since FTL, they’d all had Cyteen on one side, going

way too fast, Sol slogging along sublight on the other, and Pell trying to keep

Section iv

peace in the middle and modernize trade, create markets,

match

Cyteen’s

expansion, and negotiate with them as equals—everything in delicate balance. But Sol wouldn’t stay in its bottle forever. Cyteen’s population was

expanding like a yeast culture, but by artificial means, and they were

living ...

well, not forever, but

long. There was going to be a meeting, and

one hell of a culture shock—and humanity that didn’t come from Sol system

or Cyteen birthlabs had everything at stake. That

was why

Finity

, running very little cargo, had made the trip out to this

bag-end of all commercial space. “Alpha’s not going to like us much in a few hours,” JR said soberly. “Less,

when we go ashore.”

“Wouldn’t expect it,” Fletcher said. “We don’t

start

anything,” JR said. “If it starts, we just become scarce, get

back to the sleepover and don’t involve ourselves in any quarrel we don’t

understand. We’re missing two ships we wanted. We work with what we’ve

got.”

“These are the tough nuts,” Fletcher said. “The ones with damned few

options. Alpha’s it, for them.”

“They’re it for Alpha, the same, aren’t they?

Station’s going to be upset

with what we have to offer. I really don’t want to get afoul of the EC office

here. But it’s likely we will.”

“Afraid that’s going to be the case,” Fletcher said. “But that’s their choice.”

Chapter 1

Another velocity dump, a vector change ...

Abrezio requested approach

data ...

and

Finity

’s path fell, somewhat anticlimactically, within a standard

pattern. Delicate, delicate matter to have a ship like that touch the mast under its

own guidance. Abrezio thought of ordering

Finity

to shed all relative motion

and leave it to station assistance, which, for one thing, would give them

another number of hours; but if

Finity

thought it needed that—and reputation

swore they were beyond good—

Finity

could make that request. If he

ordered

it,

Finity

could outright ignore the order, and the EC would be left looking

foolish if they made it—while Pell would be the villain if they damaged the

mast. Let an incident happen—God, what were the odds of real damage to the

station?

To the other ships linked to B-Mast?

If he judged wrong ...

loss of

his job might be the least of his worries. Abrezio stayed still. He watched the progress of it, telling himself at any

time down to the last few seconds, he could tell that behemoth to brake and

abort. But if it didn’t listen—what could he do?

The entire fleet of runabouts

and tenders wouldn’t be enough to stop it. Ops and that ship were in communication. Decisions were being made. When

Rights

had done this maneuver, tugs had pushed her slowly into

position. He watched as that mammoth ship followed the graph without a hitch,

velocity curve and position all right on the numbers. They had three, four

ships balancing

Rights’

presence on the A-mast. Now they had removed two,

and that might not be enough, by the numbers ops was throwing out. They

were going to need to use the tanks to even it out, one pumping madly, as

was. Docking proceeded. Once coupling was complete, the data feed would

begin—they had no damned choice about that. Station’s feed would go to

Finity’s

black box, and

Finity’s

content would go to station’s, no defense, no

argument. It was the system Cyteen had designed, and an integral part of the

physical hookup for an FLT ship. Of all the data Cyteen had handed out free,

the nature of the link between the black box and the FTL engine controls had

never been explained ...

or cracked. And Cruz’s team had tried, oh, how

they’d tried. They were fools to fight it, in Abrezio’s opinion. Information was, and

always had been, one of the most valuable commodities a ship carried, though

it wasn’t until FTL and the black boxes that it actually achieved specific trade

value. Just how much of the data coming in on

Finity

would be useful to

Alpha was a question. Digital entertainment, published scientific papers,

anything copyrighted or trademarked ...

those were the reliable commodities. Not just the new ones, but the statistics on usage of established goods. Vids,

books, music: Alpha’s creative citizens waited eagerly for usage figures ...

and the station credit that came with those figures. That feed also contained data on current market prices, prices on goods

that flowed freely between Cyteen and Pell, Mariner and Viking. For the most

part, those figures were irrelevant to Alpha. Venture

got only the table

leavings of luxuries, and what passed on down the line from Venture got

absorbed by Bryant’s. Except for essentials. Those, purchased directly from Pell, did get

through

to Alpha, and possibly the worst aspect of those painfully transparent trade

figures was the fact that he knew damned good and well that what Alpha paid

for those essentials in no way reflected what, say, a Viking baker, at a single

remove from Pell, paid for them. Konstantin had made Alpha a deal, back

when the first shipment designated entirely for

Rights

put them in crisis for

simply feeding their citiziens. That special pricing continued to this day, for

which Abrezio was reluctantly grateful. Reluctantly because the fact was,

thanks to

Rights,

Alpha hadn’t the return trade to be a truly viable market for

Pell at this far remove, but without those foodstuffs from Pell, well, the EC’s

hand-picked execs would be building their own ship. Which reality of interstellar economics didn’t stop him from feeling like a

damned welfare case. Didn’t stop him from lying awake at night wondering

when Konstantin was going to wake up and realize that long-ago agreement

was still on the books and cut them off, or worse, what Konstantin was going

to expect in return for

not

cutting off that supply. It hadn’t always been like that. Time was, Alpha had had plenty to offer in

return, when the pushers from Sol actually brought Sol exotics. From Sol

these days they got precious little to send out along the trade routes, except

information, and much of that came in on the Stream: news, political

scandals ...

all a minimum of six years out of date, but certain parties up the

line paid well to have that data entered into the black box system. Other

digital information, things requiring usage tracking, those came in on the

pusher ships. Slower still, but more secure. Formulae and processes for

products, flavors, pharmaceuticals, books, pictures, vid games, and

entertainment vids—of which only those based on Sol’s notions of life

beyond Sol system sold all that well. Spacers did like their comedies. With every Sol shipment going straight to

Rights

, all local interest in the

Farther Stars exotics vanished. Alpha simply couldn’t afford them. The

handful that trickled through, mostly special orders, helped keep their loyal

ships operational. Alpha rarely saw the ships that traded directly with the

planeted stars. And now ...

they had four. The dose of fairly current trade stats that had

already hit the boards from the first arriving outsiders had sent jitters through

the markets ...

mostly from what wasn’t there. They’d offered goods, but

nothing like the quantity they might carry. What were they holding back?

Alpha was a bare-bones economy. They

didn’t need it driven home to them. And then, there was the issue of what Alpha had to send back to Sol

system in return for their nonexistent support. Data from the Farther Stars—

patents, books, vids ...

the same sort of low to no-mass, security-requiring

goods as they received ...

and with a similar, arrogant bias regarding life on

the far side of the pusher-ship’s route. He’d often wondered how those were

received, back on Sol, or if they ever actually got distributed. Black box tech

made such things available to everyone. Secure data feeds to the EC back on

Sol Station went only as far as the EC wanted them to. News feeds from Pell and beyond required a vastly different approach. Everything,

everything

had to be vetted. Some things could simply be added

to the Stream, to get to Sol in six years, and available for anyone with the

right equipment to capture. Some were simply too potentially volatile to send

that way. Those they put onto secure chips and sent via the massive pushers to

his superiors to decide what could be turned loose to Sol at large, all traveling

sub-light, slower than the antiquated Stream. Fortunately, his predecessors had had the same problem and he’d inherited

a system of vetting and a trained team to do all the work along with the office. Damn the whole breed the Farther Stars were cultivating. Arrogant. Contemptuous of the planet that had birthed the entire human race. And of the

stations still owing allegiance to it. Then he thought of Hewitt and of Cruz, who arrived with their own sort of

arrogance. And the people in Sol system making those vids, who damned well

hadn’t done their homework. And the Company that sent metal for a damned

expensive A-mast ornament rather than goods to keep their station’s economy

alive while they built that monster ...

And he wondered if arrogance and selective ignorance weren’t simply

another commodity being traded freely throughout both systems, each rich

enough to slander the other with impunity. Watching the telemetry coming in from

Finity

, he was reminded of the

pusher ships coming in: It moved with the same delicate precision, reminder,

perhaps, that this crew, at least some of them, had once had a pusher of their

own. Oldest in the fleet. Royalty, Cruz had called them, and likely, in their

own guts if not their minds, that’s exactly what they were. And wasn’t that going to add another twist to the mix of people gathering

in his station?

Forget the docking, the diplomacy of the next few days was

going to be a nightmare. Spacers. He could almost track the thinking of Pell

and Sol, but spacers were a whole different breed. The two remaining pusher ships’ crews—Alpha’s other contact with

Sol-

ward humanity—after generations of their own company, weren’t arrogant so

much as ...

odd, eccentric in the extreme. But they were an understandable

breed, still welcomed as heroes at Sol as well as Alpha, treated with the

deference they earned in their long, lonely service to the star-stations. Pushers

were the link they had with Sol. They brought, besides the goods, a link with

the traditions and the past—and their own load of plain-spoken news that

would never make it into the Stream. Pusher crews

appreciated

the luxurious

facilities the EC provided them as thanks for their extended exiles from the

rest of humanity. They were

glad

for what they got. Pushers, however, were a dying breed, and their culture and traditions were

disappearing with them. Pusher crews had had no choice about their

difference. Their time-dilated lives and years spent isolated from any other

society necessarily set them apart. Friends—and enemies—made during leave

were, of necessity, ephemeral. Historically, the pusher crews and station alike

had enjoyed those extended leaves free of charge. Historically, a pusher’s

arrival heralded a grand free-for-all of sex, alcohol, and good times, couples

meeting, packing a lifetime of relationship into a handful of nights, as both

station and ship injected new DNA into their isolated pools. These modern spacers, the FTLers, were yet another breed. They

chose

to

set themselves apart as something above stationers, worthy of the same

entitlements their pusher forebears had won, but with none of the personal

sacrifices. They complained mightily about high charges from the station, but

they were a profit-making operation. A few months lost each jump transit was

nothing against the years of human contact the pushers lost. FTL

should

have

helped synchronize the spacers with the rest of the universe and

given

them

common interests with the stations, given them ties with the offspring their

sleepovers created ...

but it had done the opposite. These modern spacers—

these

Families

—arrived with a chronic disregard for stationer rules,

diametrically opposed cultural expectations—even languages that only a

single ship understood. These days, rules and security gates separated the spacer Strip—where

station just let spacers do much as they pleased, charged them for it, enforced

law where public safety was threatened, and generally just tried to keep the

lid on—from the rest of the station. Any DNA exchanges in this FTL age

happened between ships, not ship and station, with rare exception, mostly in

the hospitality industry, and often with unhappy outcome. The gulf of distrust

between spacers and stationers had grown wide on Alpha ...

except for the

stationers who manned the businesses and bars

on the Strip. Some of those

had become more spacer than stationer, if loyalties and moral expectations

were the determining factors. It didn’t help that commerce, the flow of goods between stations that kept

the spacers alive, had changed drastically—heated by a prosperity in the

Beyond that the First Stars couldn’t match. The market had become far more

interactive and volatile. In the pusher years, stations had been economically as

independent as the ships carrying goods. Purchase orders had taken years to

fill and all of the goods received had been distributed through the station’s

central purchasing, which calculated the margins and doled out to individuals

according to calculated need. These days, market lag was a matter of months, not years, and while those

all-important staples still went through central purchasing, station shops often

dealt directly with the market for luxuries. Would the station residents

willingly go back to more stable times?

Certainly not the ones with a foot in

the black market, trading directly with spacers, selling contraband to other

stationers. Spacers, for whom the new system meant economic independence,

definitely would not go back. Was it all Cyteen’s fault?

If not for that gift of FTL from Cyteen,

commerce and colonization would still be running at sublight speeds. If not

for that

gift

, Alpha would still be thriving. Maybe. The fact was, progress

happened. Those affected just had to find a way to adapt. Cyteen. Now there was yet another in the disparate grouping of humanity

taking shape in the universe. The First Stars tended to hold Cyteen as the evil

lurking in the shadows, madly proliferating population, a clone army with

which they intended to take over ...

everything. Corrupting the powerful with

drugs. Aiming at universal mind control. Personally, he doubted Cyteen would bother. Cyteeners had always thought

in terms of escaping Sol’s control. Renegade scientists had hijacked a station

core intended for Viking—or was it Mariner?—and headed for a reachable

star with a biologically viable planet. Cyteen’s founders had wanted out and

away, and ultimately FTL had given them the ability to make that dream an

unstoppable reality. Somehow he doubted Cyteen ever wanted to get cozy with Sol, let alone

take it over, complete with all the attached problems. But FTL wasn’t the only game changer Cyteen had bestowed on the rest of

humanity; and the last thing Sol needed was the second thing Cyteen had to

spread about. FTL had been a gift. This one—cost. Rejuv. Immortality. Expensive

immortality. If FTL was a gift, rejuv provided the funds. God, what a pain in the ass Cyteen had become with that one. Who needed

a drug that allowed a small handful of already too-powerful people to live a

double lifespan?

And Abrezio

knew

that was happening on Pell. Emilio

Konstantin had been an old man when Abrezio had been a junior clerk in the

former stationmaster’s office. Konstantin had still been an old man when he’d

closed Pell’s EC offices and dumped the personnel on Alpha. And that same old man had christened the first mega-ship. The same ship,

Finity’s End,

that was now in process of docking at

his

station. Abrezio’s nerves vibrated anew to the shock of

seeing

that approach, a

juggernaut bursting out of nowhere, not the delicate lance of the smaller

FTLs, but a force that made the sun itself react ...

Damn. He’d worked hard to put that memory to rest....

and his glass was empty. He left it that way. Having seen

Finity

come in, he needed all his wits

about him. Having seen

Finity

come in ...

Suddenly, viscerally, he understood why crews from the old pushers,

converted as the first FTLers, had thrown up their hands and overturned their

seniority, saying helm was no longer an old man’s position. That was power

incarnate. Adjust the entry vector, aim that shockwave at the station rather

than the star ...

that

was something to fear. He’d just seen what

The Rights of Man

was supposed to be, but he’d had it

insolently handed him by a Pell-based ship, doing things—doing things that

the ship his people had labored years on should be capable of ...

but wasn’t. From a few minutes of sheer terror—to helplessness. Maybe that entry had been intended to push Alpha into deploying

Rights. Maybe it was just for a look-see. And maybe ...

maybe it was a warning

against

what they had been

building, frantically, for decades. Showing out, Hewitt had said. He read it another way. Do you really want,

Finity

could be saying,

this

coming in with a rookie crew at the helm, aimed

at

your

star?

He was shaken. He didn’t know how Cruz and Hewitt had reacted, in their

guts. But this scared him. He wanted to hope his gut was right. He sincerely wanted to hope that the

entry was more than arrogant bravado. Maybe, he told himself, Pell wanted to talk. Maybe that had prompted this

sudden visit of three ships—and

that. But why now?

What fickle god had sent these ships to Alpha, maybe as a

long-overdue move toward reason and negotiation, at a time when he already

harbored another potential game changer. A guilty secret he’d held for over

six months without acting on it. A precious handful of numbers he’d held

secret because ...

Because those numbers—and what they implied for the future of mankind

—would create a shockwave as powerful, politically, as the one that ship had

created in space. A shockwave with an impact impossible to predict, and the

last thing he’d wanted was to put them into the hands of a man like Cruz. He’d been waiting ...

for options, for some clue as to a proper course of

action. Damn it. Six months ago he’d come in possession of a letter internal to Alpha, a

letter from a retired scientist who’d kept working, unfunded, just because it

was his lifetime project, which no one else seemed inclined to pick up. For

decades, the man had been sifting old pusher data that occupied a massive,

seldom-accessed storage in one of the cold sections. Unlike jump transit, in

which—by what Abrezio knew—human senses didn’t make sense and most

of the ship’s sensors didn’t either, sublighter crews

as well as

the instruments

were up and working for the entire trip, recording years and years of data and

observations, including curiosities and things off in the deep dark. Buried in that data, so the old man claimed, was the long-sought key to

Sol’s FTL future—jump points: sufficiently isolated points of enough mass to

haul an FTLer down to normal space and let it refine its path to the next one. What they had was not the single jump point they had hoped to find, but two

points that zigzagged their way from Barnard’s Star—Alpha—to Sol, a less

direct route than they’d hoped, but providing, nonetheless, stepping stones for

an FTLer heading from Alpha to Sol and back. The coordinates of the suitable

masses—and the paths they followed—nothing in the great dark stayed still—

were right now locked in the safe tucked into the floor under Abrezio’s feet, a

secret not trusted to anyone else, certainly not trusted to station computers and

certainly not shared with the black boxes that sucked up everything and took

it elsewhere. The old scientist himself was currently in a very comfortable, closely

guarded and monitored confinement, with any luxury he wanted. Fortunately,

that wasn’t much. A library, a computer, read-access to anything

he asked ...

including that wealth of public-information pusher data, which he continued

to study, just to see what else he could find. The old man was happy. He knew

what he’d found: the discovery of a lifetime that would someday put his name

in the history files. It was sad, in a way. The old man’s colleagues and friends were all dead. The only regular outside contact he had was his doctor, the son of the doctor

he’d had for years. No one knew why he was sequestered, or even

that

he was

sequestered: the man had been, and still was, a hermit. The only real

difference in his life pre-discovery and now was his comfort level, and of that,

he had never complained. He probably

thought

word had gone to Sol, and had

just gone back to his beloved data analysis, trusting he’d done all he needed to

do. Luckily. Had the old man been more set on seeing his name in the history

books, he could have made a real problem for a stationmaster trying to do the

right thing with the old man’s discovery and still struggling with what that

right thing

was. Abrezio was not accustomed to feeling like a thief hiding stolen goods. But

he felt that now, guilty and desperate. The transfer appropriation of the

Rights

plans in the first place hadn’t been his choice. The EC rep on Pell had

masterminded that matter and passed the plans—along with the responsibility

of informing the head offices—on to him, bypassing the Venture office as

untrustworthy and the Bryant’s office as incapable. His first year in this office, and the stolen blueprints had landed on his

desk. Life had been simpler then, his duty to the Company more obvious. He’d sent those plans, immediately and without a second thought, on to Sol

via the Stream, and twelve years later had received his orders to build

Rights

the same way. And a handful of years after those written orders, Cruz had arrived to take

control of the project ...

and look how

that

had panned out. The EC wanted that ship

built

at Alpha—and he’d done it. He’d found a

way to feed his people

and

build it, without a whole lot of help from Sol. With the arrival of Hewitt, he’d begun to get a sick feeling just where EC

priorities lay, and it wasn’t with the well-being of the faithful at Alpha. It was

that ship and the people they sent out to build it. But while Hewitt and Cruz would get the credit should the project succeed,

he and his people, the hard working Alpha citizens who had built it and given

up their lives to train on the sims, would be the ones to blame if it didn’t. And that was why, when—with

Rights

just back in dock from a test

failure

—he’d gotten that letter, he’d kept it completely to himself and that dedicated

old scientist. He was not about to give Cruz the chance to pull that place in

history away from one of

his

people. He’d been planning to send the

coordinates on to Sol via

Atlantis

when it made dock, the safest and securest

transmission, along with its notes, cautions, and original data, with a bio of

the old man and his dedication to his project. But

Atlantis

was three years off from Alpha, and would take another

decade getting back to Sol. Not that long, really, in historical data transfer with Sol, and he could

shorten it by a bit if he had

Atlantis

transmit it on the Stream, the ancient

lightspeed beam to Sol and pushers in transit, once

Atlantis

was well beyond

Alpha’s system, where no spybot was likely. And once that information was

in Sol’s grateful hands, Sol authorities could test those numbers, send probes

to verify the jump points ...

and have the credit properly established before

Cruz ever even knew the data existed. He

hadn’t

planned to trust it to the doubtful security of the Stream from

Alpha, a transmission that anyone, theoretically, could intercept, if they

lurked and waited. Even if he managed to sneak a top security transmission

past Hewitt, there was that other, ever-present fear, that some shadow lurked

out there, insystem, something dropped by Pell to tap the Stream for

information passing between Alpha and Sol; some robot just mindlessly note-

taking and downloading to the occasional visitor that

wasn’t

an Alpha regular. No, he hadn’t sent that data on that vulnerable beam, and he began to fear

that hesitation had been a mistake. It would have been well on its way by now

if he had. But now, with what he had underfoot—and these visitors—he had a

new worry. The old man insisted he’d told no one. Abrezio knew

he

hadn’t told

anyone, not his secretary, not even his wife, and

definitely

not Cruz or Hewitt. But what if the old scientist

had

acquaintances who’d tried to reach him,

people who knew what his work was, and started speculating?

There were, ultimately, no truly secure secrets in a community whose job

was creating theories out of isolated facts. And given the gathering of these

outsider ships—if

he

could form a worst-case suspicion what might have

lured them—

Dammit. Or—maybe,

maybe

the timing was just a nightmarish coincidence. The

letter and the test run had just happened to coincide. Maybe it was just the

fact

Rights

had made a test run—maybe Pell just didn’t know it had failed. Six, seven months ...

and here four Pell ships were. Either event could

have triggered this visit. Alpha was such a fragile blip in the dark, right on the edge of trouble. Alpha had for years dreaded the day that some damned committee at Sol

decided to go with what they had, build a smaller FTL, and route it through

haunted Beta. Wishful theories proliferated: the disappearance of the colony

was a combination of circumstances, a mass panic, a wrong decision. It could

all be explained. The ship that explored the disaster hadn’t looked in the right

place. Somewhere, there

were

bodies. Tell that to

Santa Maria,

which was one of Alpha’s two pushers, still

making the Sol run. They

weren’t going back there. Nor should anyone else. The coordinates he had in the safe right under his feet—

were

possibly the

answer. Sol to Alpha. Economic salvation, not a death sentence. He’d just

needed three more years, for

Atlantis

to arrive, and

take

the burden. And now ...

he had four Pell ships clogging his B-mast. Section v

Damn

the Konstantins. No matter what he did now, or didn’t do—he risked everything. It was a

nightmare. Confide in Cruz, or Hewitt?

Hell if. Granted Pell was up to something—his back was against the wall, take it or

leave it. His choice right now had to be

his

choice, and to make a right one, he

had to know, first of all, what Pell was after. Chapter 1

Rumor didn’t just run wild on the Strip: it bounded from bar to bar, gaining

embellishment as it went, and while it might be natural that with so many

strangers arriving, there was a doubling of uniformed station security

presence on the Strip—

rumor

said it was because

Finity

was bringing in Pell

security and the EC blue-coats were worried. Contrary rumor said the issue that brought all these ships was somewhere

in the Beyond, that Pell and Cyteen had drifted toward hostilities, and that

Pell was out shopping for allies, which

might

mean a trade deal. Still another rumor said that Pell was joining up with Cyteen and that it

was a takeover move, with more ships to follow. It was certain that

Finity’s

crew, the Neiharts, and the rest of these strangers

combined would have the weight of numbers on the Strip, and that was not a

comfortable feeling. Along with the extra security, there was a growing

number of

Rights

crew on the Strip, fancy blue uniforms, conspicuous in the

motley flash of spacer crews, whose ship-color jackets might be the same

general shade and pattern, but even that wasn’t a given. Rumors aside, there was a current buzz of good times on the Strip. Jobs

were on offer, for however long the influx lasted. A few luxuries and some

new entertainment had hit the Strip. There was, for stationers, a little stint of

better-paying work. Hotels—station officially hated the word

sleepovers

, but

the term was catching on—hotels had called up furloughed personnel from

such interim jobs as processing and recycling, operations that typically filled

the financial gap for stationers running the Strip’s hotels and bars and shops,

the number of which varied with what ships were in port. The current bloom of jobs on the Strip had started with the listing of

Firenze

for repair, which meant a hundred-some of the Galli family resident

on the Strip indefinitely. With

Little Bear

’s arrival, they’d called up more. When the Patels of

Mumtaz

and the Druvs of

Nomad

had come in, they’d

opened every ordinary hotel on the Strip, unbolted the panels that concealed

unused frontages and turned on all the colored lights and vid displays in

all

the sections of the Strip. It was a garish and exciting show. Goods flowed into Alpha from the

outsider ships, cheap and flashy things as well as rare tastes and foodstuffs,

and the ships’ outsider crew spending scrip freely up and down the Strip was

enabling workers to feel unnaturally flush, able to buy some of what was

passing into Alpha’s warehouses, even to speculate on cargo to purchase and

warehouse, exotics that might ride

Atlantis

back to Sol, a long-term

investment, the sort stationers might make for their kids. Souvenir and trinket shops were doing a brisk trade—some souvenirs, like

ship patches and sparkling pebbles from Sol, had aged into real value, of

interest to these wealthy Farther Stars traders. And perhaps more valuable, these outsiders brought rare metals and

minerals to back their scrip. For the first time in thirty years, raw materials

had arrived

not

specifically earmarked for

Rights,

and that was the positive

side of the matter. Maybe Rosie would finally get his grey-water plumbing

fixed. With

Finity’s

arrival, recycling and some maintenance and manufacturing

were going on hiatus, absolutely stripped of workers. It was a wonder, some

joked, that the station didn’t wobble on its axis, with so many stationers called

over to the Strip side. Now the question was, for how long?

A typical ship rotation was ten to

sixteen days. Travel-worn ships might put in for a bit longer; another might

linger for some special problem or wait for a cargo. But this confluence of strangers from the Farther Stars?

Nobody could

predict how long the uncommon traffic would stay at Alpha, or whether—in

shopkeepers’ wildest dreams—they might portend a lasting increase in traffic,

complete with new trade agreements. Some stationers liked that idea. Local ship crews weren’t as happy. As

Finity’s End

docked with B-mast, a soft, slow and perfect approach, the

scuttlebutt was less optimistic where

Galway

’s crew gathered to watch. “They’re here to put the pressure on,” Senior Captain Niall Monahan said,

at a back table in Rosie’s, Rosie’s at its most raucous being the most secure

place on Alpha’s Strip for ship’s personnel to discuss anything they didn’t

want to reach station admin. “Somebody’s

got an agenda, haven’t they?”

A lot of guesses flew about the table, the vast majority involving Pell, and

none of the speculation including an offer of softhearted charity from that

quarter. Galway

’s first shift, Ross Monahan among them, held the whole back of

the place. The tables were fixed in clamps, as tables were supposed to be, but

Rosie’s had this clever arrangement—leaves that locked from table to table to

create a meeting spot that let extra chairs jam in tight. Galway

’s Family, the

Monahans collectively, numbered a hundred twenty-four, and fifteen seats to

a shift—working posts and backup. Their first and fourth bridge shifts were

crowded at several of Rosie’s tables, with a few from second and third. They

were the largest crew of the largest Alpha ship except repair-bound

Firenze,

whose people held the next-over row of tables. Ross sat next to Fallan and sipped Rosie’s pub-brewed beer, watching the

largest ship he’d ever seen move in with pin-point accuracy, and asking

himself what it would be like to be aboard—to see what her crew had seen,

the massive stations, planets with life, stars that weren’t nasty-tempered red. He wondered what the ring-docks were like, that new system of docking that

let you walk out a gangway at full G rather than float down the mast; a system

designed specifically to keep these so-called longhaulers’ mass off a station’s

delicate masts. It was a system

Galway

had never seen, except under early

construction, their last stop at Venture. He’d seen the vids of docks and ships

built to carry cargo in monster containers, some complete with temperature

and pressure control, that could carry massive amounts of enviro-sensitive

cargo. Finity

carried those containers in massive braces, loaded by robots. He’d seen the vids, but no vid could capture the sheer size of the ship now

coming in to dock. He couldn’t imagine the trade that could support one such leviathan, let

alone the number of similar ships rumor said were under construction out at

Pell. One thing was obvious: the amount of goods that now flowed

between

stations on the far side of Venture was way beyond Alpha’s traffic. Mind-

numbingly beyond it. There were two inhabited planets producing goods out

in the Beyond, with huge orbiting facilities to process foodstuffs into edibility. Goods

flowed

out there, and now Venture, the one station that made

Galway

’s

route viable, was remaking itself to suit that sort of ship. Even

Little Bear

and

Mumtaz

, a third the mass of what was incoming, had that weird bow, a jutting

structure on the ship’s core stationside of the ship’s own ring—conspicuous

on those ordinary ships, greatly altering their profile—not so evident on

Finity. No matter the size of the ship, the attachment to the ring-docks had to be

identical in every way. The same exact structure—with a shape reminiscent of

the bow on the ancient sailing ship that was old

Argo’s

patch—a ship with an

eye to find its way. Ships on Earth’s oceans used to have that structure—a

ram, meant to kill other ships. Ross had looked that up, back when he was a

younger, back when he’d been fascinated with the old pushers and collected

all their patches—replicas, except

Santa Maria

and

Atlantis,

which were the

real thing. They were his two real treasures, those—which were probably

worth a bit of cred out in the Farther Stars, where the real thing had never

visited. Santa Maria

’s patch was also a sailing ship, but of a later age of Earth. Atlantis

’s was an early spacecraft—winged, for landing on Earth. He’d once

thought—at the time he’d been an obnoxious, rebellious younger—that

somewhere, someday, he’d trade those special patches, and have ship-cred

enough to buy most anything on dockside. He’d wanted a fancier vid player,

at the time. Later, he’d dreamed of shipping out on

Santa Maria

and making it back

again—magically unchanged. The universe would naturally make an

exception in his case, and he wouldn’t get time-lagged from the rest of

Galway

and everyone he knew. He’d just return to

Galway

at Alpha and

automatically be senior crew on

Galway

and incredibly swag, exotic, and

cool, and the proud owner of a collection of Sol exotics he’d cannily

traded

his patch collection for. He’d come back to the First Stars with those Sol

goods, goods to bolster

Galway

’s struggling bank account. He’d rejoin his

crew. They’d trade those goods all the way to Pell and be rich. His mind had run to stupid things like that. But he’d resisted the vid player,

and now he had a collection he treasured. He’d stayed put, and grown up, and

worked his way to Nav 1.3 , which was trainee behind their first shift senior

navigator, Fallan, and their number two, Ashlan, which meant he actually

never knew when his input to the boards

might

be what the ship was actually

using. But a 1.3 getting closer to the active nav post meant somebody retiring

who he dreaded losing, dreaded more and more as he worked beside him, and

daily realized just how much he still had to learn. Ship-clock said he was

twenty-four, while more decades than that had passed on Alpha. Nav 1, Fallan

—Fallan was father, grandfather, great-grandfather—in every sense that

mattered. A spacer rarely knew a biological father: it was all on his mother to

figure out, from the sleepovers. No, a spacer picked his own kin, aboard, and

his—the man that he had followed about, tagged after until people laughed

about it, and Fallan had no choice—his was Fallan. Still was, only now he

was half a hand taller than the old man, and hell and away stronger, and

looked out for him, Fallan never having figured he’d personally passed

biological twenty-one a century and more ago, as stations reckoned time. Of course Ross had chosen the Nav track, when he was only shipboard six. Of course he studied hard. Fallan wouldn’t take on a fool. He’d grown older. He’d seen the economy getting worse. And now he sat and watched this foreign giant come into dock at

his

station, crowding other loyal Alpha ships off the mast, taking up space at

his

home station. And he was only twenty-four. He couldn’t imagine what Fallan

and Niall were feeling. The Farther Stars were changing and moving on,

while one after the other the First Star stations shut down, while Sol, the one

source of trade that made Alpha ...

special

...

remained just—uneconomical

to reach. Youthful dreams never truly died. Riches from a sublight trip to Sol had

become the constant hope that jump points would be discovered and all the

loyal ships would finally have their day. But this thing moving in now

threatened everything that

was

...

right now. Galway

was the best ship Alpha

had, damned if he’d count the A-mast ornament, but she wasn’t—not

remotely—

this. And he was, he realized, angry about the injustice of it all. They’d worked

as hard. Galway

had her own link to the sublighters—old

Atlas. Fallan came

from there. Galway

wasn’t the first of the Alpha purpose-builts:

Firenze

was

that. But they were somebody. They were the best Alpha had. Galway

just

hadn’t been as lucky, because

Alpha

hadn’t been as lucky. Alpha

wasn’t, and

wouldn’t be until Sol entered the FTL picture, a part of that massive flow of

goods that made Pell produce a ship like

Finity. Gaia,

on the other hand, was luck incarnate. Oldest of the pushers. First

crew to challenge the EC and lay claim to their own ship, and first to lay

down the rules as they were. First to carry cargo to Pell. Right place at the

right time. Always. Now she had shed her luck on this creature. Just wasn’t fair, that. It was never fair. “One damn canister,” Captain Niall said glumly, “is about a tenth of our

hold. And that ship holds two hundred. But she’s not hauling cans this trip,

that’s what I’m hearing.”

“Just the fancy stuff,” Fallan said. “Warm storage, inside. And who affords

that, here?”

“You don’t want a taste for it,” Pru said, Com 1.2.

“You’ll remember it

forever. Unfortunately, silly stationers will buy. And it makes what we’ve got

not-good.”

“That’s a gloomy outlook,” Ashlan said. “Had Cyteen wine once. Ever after, I can’t drink a red without knowing it’s

piss-poor. Not a good thing.”

“But you had it once,” Ashlan said. “Isn’t there that?”

“Is,” Pru said. “But I can’t help it. I don’t drink red anymore.”

Ross thought,

I’d rather have it once. I’d want to have had it once. He

looked at the vid in the bar, which had gotten uncharacteristically quiet. Finity’s End, the screen sidebar said,

Origin: Pell via Venture via Bryant’s. Destination: Pell via Bryant’s via Venture. Cargo: foodstuffs, dry goods, liquor, works of art, rare earths, metals,

pharmaceuticals ...

Details followed. But they’d seen those long since: flour, sugar, various

chemicals useful in synth and printing and fabricating ...

the list was long. The market had already taken the arrival into account. Speculators were

definitely at work. Galway

had already sold their cargo—a good thing, since a

supply of metals was going to drive prices down. There was that one good fortune. For them. Santiago

, still in negotiations, was downright panicking. Galway

ought to be giving the board call: they were loaded and they’d

been due to undock and leave for Bryant’s in two days, except that station ops

had frozen everybody in place, thanks to that monster. So now they were stuck, bleeding money on dockside, until ops gave the

all-clear. They were being careful with the finance. They’d be doubling up in

sleepover rooms, and living on bar food to keep the bottom line in the black:

that was the order, given the unexpected hold. On the one hand they ached to

be underway, and on the other—damned if they didn’t want to know what was

going on here before they moved out, and what they might run into at

Bryant’s, which had already had a visitation from these ships, if one could

believe the listings. Bryant’s was in the same situation as Alpha, resource and

manpower poor, while, next station up the chain and also a recipient of a visit,

Venture, with unlimited local supply of materials and direct trade with Pell,

was soon to have a ring-dock capability, same as Pell, same as Mariner. And

Cyteen, and all its stations, presumably. Ring docks and canisters. A ship that could carry multiple times what

Galway

could stuff in her hold. Four ships that would, eventually, head back

to Bryant’s and Venture, carrying trade goods from Alpha. Galway

’s goods. Galway

’s trade. Galway

sat loaded now, so this run was

sure; but

Santiago

wasn’t. They had to be sweating. And who knew for the

run

back

from Bryant’s?

Should they undock soonest, once they could undock, and beat these ships

getting back to Bryant’s, then sell their cargo first of any ship—?

But Bryant’s would already

know

these ships had come here and might

hold out for a bargain price, leaving them to stack up dock charges far worse

there than Alpha’s. Dammit. Just ...

dammit. Section i

Chapter 2

Finity’s End

was firmly in lock, her crew exiting via the personnel lift—three

hundred eighty-four of them—all Neiharts, to Ben Abrezio’s information,

ranging in age down to six months, shiptime, and requiring,

Finity’s

com

officer said, the

best

single hotel available for all aboard, quiet corridors and 1

g for all. They had room,

all

of it 1 g, but the logistics would be tricky. Spacers were

territorial. They wanted their own space for their own people, and, like a

dinner party, if you seated the wrong two people together, it could ruin the

whole evening. Arguments among spacers notoriously could get violent, and tempers were

already hot. The hotels on the Strip were like a layered sandwich set on edge, one

behind the other, most-used nearest the strip, second and third level reserved

for mechanicals and storage, warehouses and emergency shelter. They had

already opened all the regular hotels to accommodate the three visitors. Only

one remained. The farthest-back hotel, the Olympian, was space they only

used when

Santa Maria

or

Atlantis

was in dock. That hotel had more luxury

and it was designed for longer periods of leave, as pushers tended to expect. Finity

would have no cause for complaint. The problem was, it shared three exit corridors with the Empyrean, the

Fortune, and the Argent. It was against policy to mix crews in the same hotel,

but exit corridors were common ground, and not uncommonly, if there

was

trouble, it happened there. The Olympian had four other exit corridors serving two other hotels. One

was the Opportunity, which served a tag-end of

Firenze

and

Qarib

crew—

they did get along, if not sharing-meals along. They already had to share those

exit corridors with

Little Bear, Nomad,

and

Mumtaz

, who had damnwell better

play politely, in the fairly luxurious Homeport. Rights

personnel held the Empyrean, three hundred fifty-nine persons,

including officers. Galway

had the Fortune,

Santiago

had the Argent. Encounters were inevitable. Abrezio didn’t

borrow

trouble. But he didn’t beg it, either. He ordered

onsite monitoring 24/7 in all corridors, with security backup in four offices

adjacent. Bars, too, had been assigned. Housekeeping and hospitality, called into

service in the Olympian and its two restaurants, would have polite little

printed chits to put in every room

Finity

held, offering two free drinks at a

specific bar in close proximity to the hotel’s main exit, namely Critical Mass. Those friendly chits were, in post-pusher tradition, a polite indication which

of several bars would be considered home turf to a particular ship, and where

they had special rights. Critical Mass was waked from three years of slumber,

with personnel moved in for however long it took—including a cook. A real

chef from the residency sectors. Finity

wanted the best and Alpha wasn’t reluctant to charge for it. Abrezio had had reservations about using the Olympian, which necessarily

—last available hotel—had put

Finity

and

Rights

sharing one corridor. Hotel

corridors could be relatively deserted at certain hours, exactly the right sort of

place for trouble to start. Officers

visibly

posted line-of-sight in that corridor

were one precaution Abrezio had ordered. Another was advising Andy Cruz to make a firm pronouncement to

Rights

of Man

crew and security personnel that they were to duck trouble even if it

was offered. Politics, they were told. It was not the sort of rule

Rights

was

inclined to expect, and it was a sure bet it would upset Cruz, but there was no

other place to lodge the

Finity

crew together ...

and that shared corridor

was

a way to keep an eye on them. Watch them, the word passed through

Rights’

personnel. Watch them,

watch who they talk to and where they contact each other, and look for any

clue what they’re up to. A good number of

Rights’

crew

were

trained law

enforcement. They would understand. One could hope they would explain the

facts to their shipmates. Ships had goods backing their scrip, and this offer of scrip from

Finity

listed things Alpha wanted. Badly. Robotic haggling had fined down what the

scrip would represent, and

Finity

scrip was assigned a value that would be

clear on the plastic cards and pocket chits that station issued, exchange rate

specified. There were a lot of chargeable services, from refueling to hotel and

meals, entertainment, souvenirs, name it. And the more

Finity

scrip Alpha

could collect, the better. The ships already in dock had been profitable, so far as that went. The

crews of those three ships ate, slept, drank, and minded their own

business,

excepting the fracas during the shelter-order, for which no citations had been

issued—that, in the interests of peace, despite the damage. Finity’

s

contribution of goods into the system—not a full load, which might have

overloaded the market and driven prices down—was evidently due to be

completely minor, enough to cover her station charges and refueling, but

damn little else, leaving the crew’s scrip the major gain station would have. Which posed a worrisome question throughout. Why?

Why was

Finity

really here?

He supposed they’d find out, eventually, and meanwhile ...

Meanwhile—they were getting, among the goods

Finity

was offloading, an

influx of luxuries they didn’t ordinarily see at Alpha, including hisa artwork

and textiles from Pell....

That

capped all, for novelty. It was the sort of low-

mass commodity that could see enough profit at Sol to more than justify a

shipment taking a decade to get there, not to mention holding it in storage

until there was a ship to get it there. Which opportunity might just come sooner than anyone outside this office

could know. That

was the thought dancing seductively in the back of Abrezio’s mind,

the one bright spot in the problems the visitors posed, that if he spent personal

credit to acquire that specific cargo, he could become bulletproof against any

change in the economy that Sol-bound FTL might perpetrate on Alpha. Interest in that sort of goods would only rise, if FTL became the rule. He had a purchase order in the system, one that would put a hold on the

goods for twenty-four hours. All it took was a button-push to confirm it. He

owned a warehouse. It would lie there virtually forgotten, semi-cold and quite

dark, until—until they either proved that jump point and made FTL contact

with Sol, or, in the way of things, if they didn’t, and trade with Sol continued

at sublight speed—it still maintained value. It was a prospect to fund his

retirement, in the course of time. If, however, anything went wrong in this visit and investigators began to

look for reasons—a large buy now and goods from Pell in his warehouse

could look like a personal interest. It could be turned to look very bad, and he

did not trust Andrew Cruz

or

Hewitt not to spin it that way in a serious

falling-out. He didn’t trust

anybody

Sol sent here not to have ambitions, and a

willingness to do anything to look good to those that sent him. Damned if he did and damned lot of regret if he didn’t. If it ever became an issue, he

could

claim the business deal was to give

him

reason for personal conferences with

Finity’s

captains. A convenient inroad

into relations that might yield information. Which itself could look smart—or very, very wrong—depending on how

the visit turned out. He hesitated over the file, and the button. He didn’t push it. Not this fast. Not before he had some small confidence

he knew what

Finity

was up to. Section ii

Chapter 2

Having done presence-vids and deepstudy on the layout of the station gave a

person a niggling sense of deja vu on Alpha’s Strip. JR had insisted on it for

everybody on the never-visited stations they’d called at on this run, not for

convenience, but for safety—to be sure everybody knew where exits and

accesses and takeholds were; where police might be, in case of need—or

avoidance. In addition to that precaution, the senior-juniors, ages eighteen to

twenty-two, were required to go in groups at least of three, and to keep coms

live at all times, with instructions to stay within 200 meters of some sleepover

access. That was actually a fair stretch of liberty on Alpha’s Strip. But it was

not license to roam. In general, those under eighteen ship-years would not be out and about the

docks at all. They

would be in the sleepover with their assigned minders,

midway between accesses, and far out of reach of casual disturbance. Junior-

juniors could go on the Strip only with a senior minder escort, never solo, and

never without a pocket com. Infants were in one room, toddlers in another,

and for the dozen youngests, classes never let up. Instructors, however, did

get free time, and bar time, as needed. What

Finity

did not mention in its disclosure list for customs was the force

of twenty-odd Neiharts who were staying aboard

Finity

in mast-dock, and the

fact that

Finity’s

passive sensors would be active and monitored during dock. It wasn’t that they

expected

intrusion or inquisitive visitations. It was that they

were prepared—in case the Earth Company at Alpha decided to gather a little

information, or do a little first-hand research into the nav systems of a ship

very like their own. It was fairly certain that the station was similarly touchy about

The

Rights

of Man

, in dock up at the extreme end of A-mast, with no neighbors at all. Was there a lot of imaging and pinging going on?

Oh, yes, on station’s

side. On

Finity

there was a lot of passive recept going on, and every ping

would be noted and logged as to origin, for whatever it was worth. Finity

crew in general was under orders to speak only with other

Finity

personnel in the exit corridors of the sleepover; to smile and nod if smiled at,

but not to talk in those corridors; to limit sleepover partners to Little Bears,

Mumtazes, or Nomads—more onerously, to limit alcohol, go in pairs or trios,

avoid conflict, walk away from fights, and avoid like poison being the reason

a

Finity

captain had to go extract them from local courts. The rule applied to

Finity

captains, too. JR went with Madison, second

shift captain, Hayes, the purser, and two of Hayes’ junior-senior aides, Parton

and Brenda B, to visit station offices and present papers, which was to say, to

show up with a copy of the log from last port of call to here, to sign and verify

that nobody had tampered with

Finity’s

black box—that was the stupidest

piece of the stupid red tape, but it had made some Pell legislator happy—and

to swear that the crew debarked were all legitimate ship’s family, and that

Finity

did not bring passengers, non-irradiated foodstuffs, drugs, weapons, or

explosives onto the station. JR filled out another screen of forms for ship status, and he simply entered

NA for

not accessible,

which was the new form, since the ring-docks. No,

Finity

personnel would not be coming and going aboard the ship while

at dock: that was the regulation here, and they could comply with it. Ring-

dock was much more forgiving. The airlock corridor they used for ring-dock

had a downside ops and executive office, as well as a general takehold, and

provided comfortable quarters for everybody who

needed

to stay aboard. But

they couldn’t use that airlock and corridor at Alpha. They had to exit via a

tube—cold as hell’s hinges, the thing was; and station’s orders were—

everybody off. The form noted:

Customs officials may access, y/n ...

unfunny joke. By EC rules, the ship had no choice. JR typed N ...

and wondered how long it would be before that “N” was

challenged. Meanwhile the twenty crew staying aboard would be as quiet about it as

possible. It was an interesting visit to station offices, the junior clerks directly

dealing with them being unnaturally bubbly and cheerful, darting nervous

glances, while EC police and several dour-faced individuals prowled about

the peripheries of the office on no particular business. “Sign, please.” It was a tablet, pinned to a stand. The somewhat more

senior official spun it about. JR signed it, spun it back again. “No abbreviations.” The official spun it around. “Legal name’s James

Robert.”

“JR

is

my signature. Always has been.” His mother had laid the name on

him, the only line of Neiharts that

could

attach that name to an unsuspecting

kid. He

wasn’t

James Robert Neihart, who’d been

Gaia’s

first captain, the first

captain to come back and tell the EC hands off their ship, the first star captain

to make that claim for all time to come. “Don’t argue with a man what his

name is.” He spun the tablet back. “Tell the stationmaster to ask me

personally if he wants it different.”

He got back a scowl. And turned his back on the man and the official

tablet. “Bitter beer,” was Madison’s remark. “Well, it’s not too surprising,” JR said. “We’re a big pill to swallow. Parton, BB, stay with Hayes. In case he needs a runner.”

“We’ll do fine,” Hayes said. Hayes had the longer meeting there, and they

left him to work out the banking and file the IDs for the several accounts, plus

pick up personal cards of several classifications, for those who’d be given the

use of them. There was an electronic download, advisable to read: the local list of

prohibitions: prostitution and private sale of pharmaceuticals, sale of unlisted

goods, hire of local labor, and offering ship-passage. Pretty well anything likely to involve a personal transaction with a station

resident was illegal on Alpha. Anything ship crew wanted to do with crew of

other ships was a ship problem and agreed not to lie within the purview of the

EC, except prostitution, inciting a riot, action to deface station property,

action to compromise station safety, or display or use of a weapon. Weapon

was defined as edged metal or explosive or antipersonnel device

of any sort. Edged or explosive. That was reasonable enough. No station had ever quite

dared to ban the length of small gauge roller chain that some merchanters

wore for a belt, some as a bracelet that could become a knuckle-guard, and

that most ship crew just kept decorously concealed in a jacket side pocket. Having a handle on said chain was, curious regulation on Viking, banned. Not

here, apparently. Or the idea of a handle hadn’t proliferated this far. Which

was

their bar?

The information said there were three: Saturn,

Critical Mass, and Outbound, each of the three shown on the chart as situated

beside one of the three sleepover corridors they had at the Olympian. Please

observe this assignment strictly,

the note said, adding, which was ordinary,

except if escorted by another ship’s crew. Alpha added:

Your presence in an establishment not assigned above will

automatically place you in legal jeopardy in the event of a disturbance. Liability will be assigned quickly and fines will be assessed accordingly. It

did

provide a list of establishments arranged by ship assignment, with a

diagram. Convenient. The assignment of bars was not a universal matter. Venture,

for instance, didn’t care where you drank, but they did hang up festive signs

saying

Welcome Finity’s End,

or whatever ship was in question, over

particular bars. There

were

no welcome signs evident on Alpha, and the

frontages they had passed on their way here looked alike, which was

not

convenient. Section iii

“Xiao’s assigned to Jupiter and Lucky Lily,” Madison commented,

consulting his com. “We’re not sure who Lily is, but it says varied cuisines

and free dessert with every meal.”

“I’d bet on Lily,” JR said. Xiao was a man they needed to see. “If the

dessert is decent.”

Chapter 2

Xiao Min was waiting, having a table in the corner of Lucky Lily’s, with a

cordon of three

Little Bear

tables around him. A fairly young fellow, Min: JR

felt something in common with him. They had Mum, the Xiaos had

Grandfather Jun, whose advice, like Mum’s, would be somewhere important

in any transactions. But Grandfather, very elderly, and disliking the noise of

the bars, held court in the Homeport sleepover. Grandfather Xiao Jun had

forgotten—or disdained to use—anything but

Little Bear

ship-speak. Min himself was much more flexible—and they were old allies. Little Bear

had come in all the way from the Beyond, one of the mid-generation haulers,

older than

Finity

by a decade, shiptime, as Min had held his post that much

longer. “Ni hao,” JR said, and “Ni hao,” Min answered him, followed by a hoist of

his glass. “Local beer. Actually not bad.”

JR sat down. Cousins Madison and Fletcher did, to courteous nods from

Min’s company, Ma and Shen. “Good voyage?” JR asked. “No problems,” Min said. “Easy arrival. The Company was very

accommodating, but increasingly curious when

Mumtaz

came in. Nomad

caused

great

concern.”

“You didn’t mention we were coming.”

Min offered a gentle smile. “Given their nervousness about us, we thought

it best not. In retrospect ...

perhaps not the wisest choice. You did make a

commotion.”

“We didn’t want to draw out our approach,” JR said. “And we’re sure they

were taking notes. Hope so, actually. Nasty little system, this, and best they

realize that

before

they destroy their own station with that ship. It didn’t break

dock. We were very happy about that.”

“They would not challenge you,” Min said. “

Could

not, in truth, and they

are not anxious for you, above all, to know their problems. To date—” Min

Section iv

took a sip of beer. “All

Rights

has done is pulse the vanes, which did prove

they work. But there was a shutdown. Auto, according to rumor. Definitely

unplanned. They sit in an embarrassing position—can, or cannot;

could

perhaps, but won’t risk that ship. The Strip is not sure of the details. Sitting as

it does—it is impressive for the locals, perhaps, but—” A lift of the mug. “Should

we

be impressed?

We think not. So they sit. And they wish us to

think they can move.”

“Well, at least they didn’t,” JR said. “Have you talked to admin?” Min asked. “Not yet. I just filled out the forms. You?”

“The same.” Min said. “We cleared our manifests,” Xiao Ma said. “We offloaded. Mumtaz

and

Nomad

are waiting. We have declined cargo, as per agreement. Shippers

complain. They fear we wish to drive down prices. We have said nothing, and

trust they will turn attention back to their own ships. The economy here is

beyond delicate. Finity

has agitated them greatly.”

“The other ships. Particularly those moved off to accommodate us ...”

“We have given gifts to

Firenze,”

Min said. “We have asked for a

meeting.”

“We’ll try to contact

Qarib

,” Madison said. “Are we ready, then?”

“We have the local ships’ attention,” Min said. “Not to mention the station

offices. Where shall we meet?”

“They’ve assigned us Saturn, Critical Mass, and Outbound.”

JR said, “the

latter with a certain hope, perhaps. Do we have room enough in one of those?

Or will we need to divide this up?”

Min smiled a second time and traced a symbol in the water on the tabletop,

one of his ship’s ornate script. “Let’s just say—in Critical Mass. That’s a big

place, from what I can tell. Just reopened with your arrival. It’s near here,

near Rosie’s, which covers the locals, and not too far a hike from Prosperity,

where

Mumtaz

has assignment. Nomad

shares second shift at Red Star. We

can reach one another very easily. Critical Mass has room enough, at least for

a first-shift meeting.”

His finger retraced the symbol, and this time, JR caught it before it faded:

Caution. “We’re on, then,” JR said. “1900 hours. Pass the word.”

Chapter 2

It was standing room only in Critical Mass. The suggestion had been, in a

quiet word or two from the newcomers to Alpha, that there should be a few

attendees from each crew, to be respectful of all ships’ needs. But anxiety

being what it was, and nobody having shut the doors, they had a lot more than

a few. Galway

’s senior captain Niall, Helm 1 Aubrey, and Nav 1 Fallan were

there. But so was a cluster of more first-shift and a few of second, including

Ross, who’d taken his standing orders to watch over Fallan as excuse enough. “You,” Niall said to Ross, drawing him over to a backless seat forced in

next to Fallan. Mary T and Ashlan were there, half-sibs, inseparable, now

Longscan 1.2 and Nav 1.2.

And there was Pardee, Cargomaster, and Aymes,

the purser, who navigated an equally vital set of numbers. They jammed in

chairs and stools where they needed, never minding the rails and clamps, and

a number of other Galways strayed in around the walls. They weren’t the only

crew doing it. Facts had been scarce. Rumors were getting crazy, and

everybody wanted the straight of it. Most recent rumor held that

Finity

had information on a jump point to Sol,

that Sol was opening up at last, and trade routes were about to

change—that

was the maybe-good, maybe-bad news that was racing up and down the Strip;

but some said no, that it was nothing that good. That coming from Pell, it

couldn’t be. A lot of people were angry, really angry, that any ship from the

Beyond was here, rumored to be holding out on cargo—playing games with

the markets, some said, because they

hadn’t

offloaded but a fraction of what

they could carry, and were buying nothing. Some said—naïve fools—that Pell was going to make amends with Alpha,

that

Finity

brought engineers ready to

help

with

Rights,

and maybe work out

deals to better the trade they had. Fat chance, people said to that hope. A darker rumor said that Cyteen was starting to play rough with Pell, and

that Pell was putting out feelers toward Alpha and

Rights

in hope of checking

them. Good luck there. Alpha couldn’t stop Cyteen. Alpha couldn’t fix the damn

plumbing. So bets—bets such as optimistic people dared make—hoped like hell for

the first rumor to be true: Alpha could not only survive if Earth and Sol

opened up, it would thrive. And little ships would live. It’d be change, but

they could find a way. That was the hope running the length and breadth of

Critical Mass. Maybe James Robert Neihart was here with that news—that was the

fingers-crossed hope, as they all waited for him to show. James Robert

Neihart, bit of a dark-haired pretty-boy, reports said, who shunned cameras,

but who, at twenty-five, had been handed senior command of the newest,

fastest, largest purpose-built yet constructed, by vote of the whole ship’s

family—

Gaia’s

family. When others of the old sublighters had been beached

and broken, the families had been broken, too—because the first purpose-

builts, like

Firenze,

Santiago,

and

Qarib,

hadn’t been that large—and families

had sadly fractured, even taking different names, over time. Not the Neiharts. Finity’s End

accommodated all of them with room to

spare. A legend. A friggin’ legend. Ship and captain. 1900 sharp. A half minute past, a mixed group came in and spread out

along the wall, behind the bar, happening to block service. Whatever was

going to come down, it was a sure thing that they weren’t all rated “local” to

the establishment, and if trouble started, being fairly close to a side exit

wasn’t a bad idea. Following them ...

grey jackets, six of them, entourage for a young man

also in grey, with, bet on it, a ship-patch unique among all colorful

patches. Finity’s

patch was just a solid black and starless disc, the black of space itself,

claimed by the first and oldest of

all

spacefarers,

Gaia. Not even a name

displayed. Arrogance. Absolute, chilling arrogance. There had been a time Ross had

dreamed of being James Robert Neihart. Of having that kind of luck. Now, he

could only watch as that still-youngish man made his way steadily to the

center of the room, his only badge of office a captain’s gold collar tab. And

God, good-looking to boot. But not that tall. Shortest man in the set. That was a little surprising. The stir of conversation died back, thumped to total death by a bar mug on

the counter. “Thanks for coming,” the young man said. “I’m

Finity’s

senior captain. JR

Neihart. This is second-senior Madison. Helm 1 Jim B. Nav 1 Kate. Finity

deeply apologizes, first of all, for the inconvenience to

Firenze

and

Qarib

;

and secondly for any concern the high-

V

approach caused. It was necessary

and not something we could explain until we got here.”

“Screw that,” someone shouted. “Just tell us

why

you’re here.”

JR’s face didn’t even twitch. “We’re here because we’re a Family ship—

and we don’t want to see Family ships run out of business. Any

of them.”

“Only threat to our business is three ships an’ one monster what doesn’t

belong here,” the same voice shot back. “

We’ve

no intention of intruding on your routes. We’ve minimal cargo, no

more. That’s not why we’re here. We’re here because we recognize the

shape

of that ship up on A-mast—a certain design team back on Pell is decidedly

not

happy, but we could care less about that. Not our problem. We care about

what that ship is

for. What’s

its

purpose here?”

“Ballast?” came from Ross’s right, and someone gave a snort. If JR Neihart heard, he didn’t show it. “We’ve got bets on whether we

could find our way around those corridors without a map; and odds are on it

being more than a little different inside. Won’t have a kids’ loft, that doesn’t

even get odds. Won’t need one. They’ve crewed it with hire-ons, not Family. Crew will come and go as the

Company

pleases. The Company expects

they’ll train station-born crew in one voyage and a few sims.”

“Tell us something we

don’t

know, ye damned big shot!” That was from

somewhere behind, with the thump of a beer mug. The accent was

Santiago. JR Neihart’s eyes flicked that way, sharp and quick. “All right. Try this. If that ship

is

planning to trade, no matter who crews

her, she’s doomed before she starts. First, she

doesn’t

have the bow we have

that lets us ring-dock, which means the math is against her,

regarding cargo. A

big hold takes time to load and unload. Canisters make it fast. A lot faster. Only four stations still use mast docking, and you see what extreme measures

Alpha—compliments to Alpha’s

excellent

chief of ops—had to take to

accommodate

Finity. We also had one of our best people handling docking, a

senior-senior in charge who learned on a reconfigured pusher. Gaia. I leave it

to your seniors to imagine what havoc a novice crew might have caused. And

note that most stations will

not

be ready to risk receiving that kind of mass on

a mast-end, especially a ship with a bridge full of trainees.”

That caused a murmur, and JR Neihart gave it a moment before continuing. “Secondly,

if

they’re planning to fill that cargo bay and trade, they’re also

doomed. Canister racks are the only way to safely stow cans in a cargo space

of our size ...

and for canisters, you

need

the ring-dock. Finity

and her cousin

Dublin

are

why

ring-docking was designed, and why it has become the rule in

the Beyond. It’s efficient, it’s safe ...

and there

are

smaller canisters that a

regular cargo hold can accommodate without racks. There’s plenty of cargo

that needs pushing or hauling, enough for all the ships in service.”

“Doesn’t do

us

damn all good if we can’t link up to the station.” It was no

more than a mutter, but this time Neihart’s eyes flicked toward the perpetrator. “Contrary to rumor, a ring-dock

can

accommodate smaller ships with a

regular linkup with no problem.”

That was a revelation. A really hopeful one, and helluvalot more

interesting than what he’d been saying about

Rights. With Venture shifting

over to the ring-dock, it had been a serious concern. “It’s a matter of an adapting mechanism for all of your ships. The details

I’m sure have downloaded in the box-feed. You’ll be using it eventually at

Venture. But installing the canister adaptation on that ship out on A-mast

would require an overhaul, a complete change in cargo config—assuming it

has such. The larger canisters can’t be loaded manually, and require

mechanisms inside the hold. You

don’t need the loading machinery for smaller

ships. Just the smaller canisters.”

“

How

small?” somebody called out and someone else: “That’s his bad back

askin’.”

“Controlled-environment cans that stand no taller than that doorway, and

fit a regular hold.”

Another great bit of news. Controlled-environment cargo ...

inside the

regular cargo hold?

Damn. “As for your back ...” A hint of a smile broke through Neihart’s somber

expression. “A ship at Mariner rigged a cradle out of chain and lock-plates. Seems to work on half- and quarter-cans. A manufacturer at Pell is planning

reusable cans that’ll fit a five-by-five cargo lock.”

There was a general buzz at that and again, Neihart gave it time to sink in. The rumors had them facing obsolescence and ruin. But some little ship out

there had bodged a fix—just ...

figured a solution to slinging those canisters

about using stuff every ship carried. They’d bodged it, the way ships bodged

regular things, the way people just coped with a problem when they had to

with whatever they had lying around. It was in the best tradition. And if

stations upstream were actively accommodating little ships, actually seeking

ways to bridge the gap between big and small rather than catering entirely to

the

Finitys

of the universe ...

God, it was an escape hatch in what they’d

thought an absolute wall. If

Galway

could get that adapter, if a makeshift rig was

that

easy done,

Ross thought, and then: God,

was

it that easy?

What

wasn’t

this fancy captain

telling them?

This man whose ship-cred could buy every Alpha ship in dock

and still take his crew out for dinner without feeling a moment’s pain—what

did

he

gain?

Damn, he’d come in here resolved not to buy what JR Neihart was selling. His attack on

Rights

had been pretty much as expected, but now ...

damn. His stomach was upset. And Neihart, damn him, had seen that attack wasn’t

working. He’d shifted his sales pitch over to the canisters, to the concerns he

knew damn good and well they all had. Con job, maybe ...

telling them they

had a future

“But there’s a serious problem in that idea,” Neihart said. “And that

problem’s sitting up there on A-mast. Look at our ship’s outline, the size of

our hold. That ship’s hold space is way under what it could be. Its personnel

ring is way over. That’s a ship that’s not designed for cargo. A ship that’s

drained Alpha of resources. A ship that’s

owned

by the Company. And some

think cargo-handling isn’t its objective.”

There was utter, cold silence. You didn’t say bad things about the EC. It

wasn’t against the law, but it just wasn’t smart. The blue-coats monitored the

Strip for trouble, and you didn’t want to sound like trouble. There were a lot of people here. Station didn’t like overflow crowds in

places even when everybody was in a good mood. Any minute, the blue-coats

would be showing up. And station would be noting which crews were in the forefront. “So what are you sayin’, Finity?” A shout from the table ahead, from Julio

Rodriguez, who rose halfway out of his seat. “You came all this

way ...

four

of you ...

to reassure your shit-poor cousins?

Is it

Pell

talkin’?

They tryin’ to

get us to desert Alpha and go kiss Konstantin ass?

Well, screw you!”

“No, sir!

Not Pell. We don’t endorse

any

station—or the EC—controlling

any ship. We contend that the EC shouldn’t

own

a merchant ship. It hasn’t

been so from the beginning—that was the whole point behind

Gaia’s

refusal

to stand down after the first voyage—and it shouldn’t be so now. Trade is our

realm now. It’s your realm ...

not the EC’s. The EC hasn’t given a damn

about the stations out here. They haven’t sent resources to maintain Glory or

Alpha or Venture. They could have. Pusher loads could have handled it. But

instead, they’ve built that ship. They could have helped you maintain your

ships. But they haven’t. They’ve built that ship, and built it with limited

capacity for trade. So what is it for?

And how does it serve you?”

“Bullshit, Finity. What’s it to you?”

A single dark brow lifted. “You’re Family. Family ships matter. The trust

and the trade our ships have built up with the stations are both at issue. The

EC intends to go into competition with Family ships?

We say no.”

There was another buzz, longer this time, and again JR Neihart let it run its

course. Rodriguez straightened. “You said ‘we.’ So who are you speaking for?”

“For

Finity’s End. ”

“For

Little Bear,”

a dark-haired man said. And: “For

Mumtaz,”

a hawk-

faced man said. And a dark-skinned woman, “For

Nomad.”

“You’re outsiders!”

“Are

we?” Neihart asked. “Captain

Rodriguez, do I have the honor?”

“You do, sir. And it’s a question we want answered. Need

answered, before

this goes any further. If not outsiders, you who trade in volumes we can’t

even imagine ...

even the smallest of you ...

what are you?

What do you

remotely

have in common with us?”

“Fair question.” Neihart gave a deep nod, and Julio Rodriguez raised his

chin, mouth hard. “Not as much as we once did and not nearly as much as we

hope to have in the future.”

Rodriguez opened his mouth, and Neihart raised a hand. “Bear with me,

just for now. ‘We’ is

not

Pell, or Cyteen or any other station. ‘We’ are—as of

now—some forty-six of sixty-three families like your own, hoping to make

that sixty-three of sixty-three, including the ones operating past Pell, where

we also have Families out getting signatures. Old Families. Ship Families. Families that may have subdivided and spread

out through space, but who

remain part of the original twelve Families that have served the star stations

through all the shifts and changes, and who have been

loyal

to a set of

principles that have served all interests out here for generation after

generation. One of those principles, the absolute most basic, is

ownership.”

Julio Rodriguez’s head tipped, his eyes narrowed. “From the beginning, we’ve served all interests,” Neihart said, “but these

days the only ones looking out for

our

interests ...

is ourselves. The stations

can’t do it. The EC

certainly

won’t do it. Thus far, those of us serving beyond

Pell have maintained our rights to independent ownership against two very

powerful interests.”

“Easy to say when your ship isn’t mortgaged to the hilt.”

“And why is that?”

“You know damn good and well why.”

“Lack of cargo from Sol is only part of the problem. Time was, no ship

ever went into debt. Time was ships hauled necessities between stations and

in return the stations took care of them, kept the systems and equipment up to

date and

gave

the crew a place to stay when they were in port ...

but we no

longer deal in that simple economy. Now there’s credit. Now ships have

books to balance, and they pay stations for services. Alpha still covers your

repairs, as they did in the past, but those repairs happen at the station’s

priority, not yours, and they charge you docking fees and for food and bed

when you’re forced to layover for mechanicals. In the Beyond, we pay not

only for layover, but for the repairs themselves. Our cargo comes out of

station-credit at one end and goes into it at the other. We are completely

independent. That’s the reality of modern economics. We forty-six

respect

your efforts to maintain your pride and independence in a difficult situation,

but we fear for your future—and our own, thanks to that A-mast ship and

what it implies about the EC’s view of the future.”

Another muttering interruption. Dangerously close to opinions you just

didn’t

have, not on Alpha. And this time, Neihart didn’t wait for it to die down. “We have indeed had the advantage in this new economy. More, perhaps,

than you realize. Beyond the fact that we have two bio-rich planets in our

FTL routes, beyond the fact we have several mineral-rich systems with

thriving stations, beyond the fact that the tech keeps evolving and Alpha has

never brought your ships into compliance with the new standards ...

beyond

those obvious advantages, there’s the fact that

we

deal directly with the

decision-makers of the stations we serve. Thanks to that ongoing dialogue,

they understand that their prosperity is directly

linked to ours. The better our

ships, the faster our turnaround, the more trade they have with the other

stations and the more money they make. You

have not had that ability. Your

stationmaster does what he has resources to do. But the decision-makers that

affect your livelihood, who decree the fate of the stations you keep alive, have

sat at Sol, untouchable, out of reach, issuing out-of-date orders that make no

more sense now than they ever have. They don’t care about keeping your

ships current, they don’t care about sending enough product to keep trade

with the other First Stars healthy and your books in the black. They only care,

as they always have, about their

projects. Their current

project

has shut down

Galileo Station, shut down Thule—thereby cutting your routes in half—and

brought extreme hardship on the rest of the First Stars, which were never

gifted with the resources this construction has demanded, and who have

depended on shipments from Sol for simple survival ...

shipments which

have now given way to the demands of that ship. And without cargo to carry,

without the tech upgrades the old agreements once promised you, your ships

are doomed.”

“Dammit,” Rodriguez said, turning to go, “this is bullshit. I’m out of—”

“

Unless

you get help.”

Rodriguez froze. Turned. “Help!

From

where?”

“Not from Alpha. Unlike Pell and all the other stations in the Beyond,

stations that were built without EC endorsement and who have long since

denied the EC any say over their operations, the First Stations have no choice

but to follow EC directives and accept EC personnel. Your station here can’t

help you, because the EC tells your station director how to spend his

resources, and the EC has other priorities.”

Chilling statement. Dangerous. And true. Julio Rodriguez sank slowly back

into his chair beside his brother. “And you’d get no more help out of Pell or Cyteen, either,” Neihart said. “Not unless, yes, you defected to their routes, and then you’d be competing

with each other for their attention

and

still having to pay the bills. Even if

they did agree to a refit, you’d be generations paying off the debt. They

simply don’t care. Out there, stations think of other stations as potential

markets—numbers, not people. And our ships are simply a means to transport

product to those markets. All they get from Alpha is luxury goods passed on

from Earth, which they can easily live without. And in recent years, with even

those luxury goods cut off, they rarely think of Alpha at all, let alone Glory or

Bryant’s. They

do

worry about Sol. They worry about the EC trying to come

in and take over administration once Sol finds a route. And that ship up there

looks to them like there

might be a plan to make that takeover happen with or

without that route. They

really

worry about Sol

or

Alpha getting desperate

enough to make a run through Proxima, risking all the bad luck that star

harbors just to get an FTL link to

their

stations. The bitter reality is, all the

stations in the Beyond would just as soon all the stations this side of Venture

would fail, leaving Sol, when it does break out, whether through Proxima or

some as yet unmapped jump point to Alpha, a scarcity of bases to bridge the

gap to the farther stations.”

Which meant their dream, the future every Alpha spacer had invested their

lives in ...

was the nightmare of all those stations beyond Venture. It was a

pretty good summation of bleak reality. Nobody raised an argument. “That’s what the

stations

out there think about your stations. For you and

your ships ...

If asked, they’d probably like to entice you into trade with

them,

but the motivation would be to leave the First Stars to rot. And as I’ve

already mentioned, to get remotely competitive out there, where the stars are

farther apart, the jumps longer ...

you’d have no choice but to get a complete

overhaul ...

which for some of you still wouldn’t be enough. Without a

modern purpose-built ship, you’d go bankrupt, and the stations wouldn’t even

notice. You ask if we speak

for

Pell. No. But we’ve spoken

to

Pell, to Cyteen,

to Mariner and Viking and Venture, with one conclusion: we all have a

problem and that the problem lies up there on A-mast: a massive ship that’s

taking hire-on crew. The stations’ position is that that ship may be designed

not

to carry cargo, but EC enforcement personnel. That’s where their concern

lies. The forty-six Families’ position is that, if it’s trading, if it’s hauling

cargo, a Family, maybe a consortium of Families, should get it.”

“The hell,” someone said—a Firenze. “

I

don’t want it!

Built by Alpha

repair shops from a stolen blueprint?

She can’t even get out of system!”

“Who do you think

should

run it?” someone else shouted. “You already

said our routes are only good for scrubs like us. You got another big Family

out there itching for an upgrade, to take what this station has gone bust tryin’

to build?”

Neihart lifted a calm hand. “You’re Alpha merchanters. You

should have

Rights. In every sense. You

should own her....

If it’s a merchant ship.”

The whole room fell silent. Ross propped his chin on his hand, trying not

to make a fist. The Neihart captain’s proposition was an event horizon. Believe it even a little, and you slipped right over the edge into a whole lot of

trouble. “They won’t do that.” That was

Firenze

’s captain, Giovanna Galli. “Ever.”

“You deserve a lot better than you’re getting,” Neihart said. “You can tell Pell and your friends not to worry. That ship won’t survive

jump,”

Qarib

helm called out. “We let those sim-trained fools shadow our

boards on a milk-run. They’re hopeless. They parked the ship in the core of

Bryant’s Star—thanks be to God that that was

not

the board that brought us

in.”

Neihart said quietly, “The first FTL crew was sim-trained.”

“Scary damned business, too,” Fallan muttered, in Ross’s hearing. “But

yeah, they sure were.”

“Aurora,”

JR Neihart said. “First FTL. Following the robot probe. Cloned-

men running her, monofocused, cold as machines themselves. But give ’em

credit, Cyteen did it. Right down the path the probe pioneered. And if they’d

popped into Mariner’s sun on that first run, I’m sure Cyteen had backups

ready. They’d have tried again, until they got it right. For all anyone knows,

the ship that made it

wasn’t

the first to try.”

Cloned-men. Infallible procedure. Infallible memory. Azi. “But I’ll tell you something,” Neihart said then. “With all their money,

with all their resources, Cyteen

didn’t

go on to create a merchant fleet of their

own, never even thought of competing with us. Cyteen decided it was

smarter, politically and economically, to convert the pushers and let the

Families do what they’ve done for centuries now, sim-training for the FTLs

during the stand-down for build, but

with

the background of generations of

experience, and

trading

with every station regardless of politics. Even Cyteen

respects the Families. Even Cyteen

understands the economy of doing that. The purpose-builts at Cyteen, at Pell, at Venture have

all

been handed over to

the Families, asking only a certain loyalty—but not exclusivity. Exactly

the

contract between the first pushers and their star-stations and Sol. The stations

maintain, the stations supply, the

ships

carry goods. Alpha used to

honor

her

ships and take pride in their upkeep ...

but what’s Alpha done for you

lately?”

“Don’t blame Abrezio!” someone said. “

He

didn’t decide on that ship up

there.”

Damn, Ross thought. Don’t say it. Don’t blame the EC and bring the blue-

coats in. “No ...

he didn’t,” Neihart said. “As always, Alpha’s fate was in the hands

of whatever committee on Earth thought it made sense to build

Rights. Some

committee decided to build a ship that

could

have given you one longhauler

and made trade with the Beyond viable, that

could

have made one or more

ship Families wealthy ...

then they gave it a minimum of cargo room, turned

it over to a bunch of sim-trained stationers?

Take a look at our ship, which

is

a

merchanter. Take a look at

Rights’

design. I’m telling you,

Rights

was never

meant for cargo, never meant for a Family. Never meant for commerce.”

Someone from the door shouted: “That what your crystal ball says?”

Julio Hernandez lifted a silencing hand. “Known fact, Finity?

Or

speculation?”

“Have I been inside her?

Have I seen orders?

No. But history and what we

do know are more than enough for concern. Fact: the First Stars have an

economic problem that reflects clear back to Sol. Fact: the EC has been

bleeding funds into the First Stars for centuries. They can’t be happy about

that.”

“The First Stars,” Galli said. “That’s not what you call us. That’s not what

the Farther Stars call us. They call us the Hinder Stars. They call themselves

the Beyond. Beyond

us. Beyond any care of us.”

“You’re

right,”

Neihart said, again not what anybody expected. “You’re

absolutely right. They don’t care. But fact is, you

and

the Beyond have a joint

problem. You think your problems will be solved when Sol breaks out. That

you’ll have direct access to the Sol market. Become the ships that ply the Sol-

Alpha route, bringing Sol goods back into the market with a vengeance. But

that’s not likely, is it?

Not with what’s building up there on A-mast. Not with

the precedent it sets and with Sol sitting on who knows how many more,

some of which likely

are

designed for cargo.”

There was quiet, deathly quiet. “The EC really only has two—peaceful—choices at this point,” Neihart

said. “And you tell me which is likely. If they’re going to maintain the control

they’ve always claimed was theirs by right of original construction—they can

break out in force, with station-born crews, to reach the profitable stars, to

bypass their loyal ships and hand those lucrative routes over to hired crew,

with the vast bulk of profit going straight into the EC coffers ...

or they can

cut the cord, relinquish all control, and let Alpha link up to Pell. I

wonder

which one they have in mind.”

It was a cold, cold picture

Finity’s

captain painted. There was a thin

murmur of comment throughout the bar, crew talking among themselves. “If the EC finds the jump points, if they manage to sim-train crews ...

what are the odds they’re going to give a damn then about the futures of all of

you?

The question, of course, is who

does

own the ships and stations?

And

more to the point ...

who

has the right to ply the trade routes?”

Damn, Ross thought. There was no question of a station having its own

ships, let alone using the power of a planet to back some esoteric interest. He’d never personally thought too much into

Galway’

s future. It had

never

looked that good, where things were going, unless Sol

did

break through and

make Alpha the gateway Alpha had been, back in the pusher days. They had a

lot to gain from that—he’d always thought. Things would be good when that happened, he’d always thought. He

believed it, at his most optimistic. If not for him, then for his children. Or

grandchildren. But what if Neihart was right?

What if, back at Sol, the EC was building a

whole fleet of these mega-ships designed to enter the market and out-compete

smaller ships, the moment that FTL future arrived?

“You think they’d do that?” he said quietly to Fallan. “You think they’d

pay us off like that?”

“Ross, lad, the man’s sayin’ somethin’ true.”

Ross turned back to Neihart just as Neihart’s gaze passed over him. He’d

swear it paused for an instant on Fallan—maybe knowing what Fallan was, or

who he was. “There’s a memory on

Finity,

” Neihart said, just before his gaze moved on,

“passed down from

Gaia’s

first run, a story you probably know. Gaia’s

crew

had just made the first-ever manned mission to another star, pushing the core

of what would become Alpha Station, a core built at Sol to be ready to go into

operation the instant it was put into orbit around the star. Gaia’s

first crew

founded

this station. They coined the term pusher-ship. And when they got

back to Sol, there was a crew trained and waiting to take over

Gaia. It wasn’t

a surprise. They knew Sol intended to hand

Gaia

to another crew, and have

that first

Gaia

crew live out their lives on Earth, as heroes, of course,

supported by all of Earth. Earth and Sol Station thought that was a fine and

proper thing to do. But by the time they got back, the crew had different

notions. The crew had gotten out of sync with Earth-time. They’d spent all

those years as alone as crew could be, connected to Sol by the Stream,

communications always years out of date, but connected to each other aboard

in a closeness that had become family. There’d been no way to anticipate how

the trip would change them. So

Gaia

’s first crew said no. There’d be no

change of crew. They wouldn’t even open the hatch until there was an

agreement that

Gaia

belonged to her crew forever. She swore she’d go where

Sol needed, haul whatever cargo Sol gave them, but she’d make her own law

and solve her own problems. And when Sol tried to talk them out of that

ownership clause, when Sol talked about money, and rewards,

Gaia

’s crew

insisted that all they wanted was provision and maintenance for

their

ship, to

be kept up to whatever the technical standard would become, and to set out

again. And Sol

agreed. That

was the compact Sol made with the first deep

spacers. “The pushers that followed all asked no more, no less—because they all

discovered the same truth: our ships are home. And by the time those first few

trips are made we’re fundamentally different, differences that grow with each

passing generation—time lag fits us into our own universe, our own sense of

what’s important. Not as fast now as in the days of the pushers, but we’re still

fundamentally

different

from stationers. And ...

something those of us who

serve the Beyond have realized ...

we’re

valuable. Ship-born Families know

things. We know how to trade with stations that aren’t like each other, and

that, plainly,

don’t

like each other much. How do we do that?

We do that by

being—best case scenario—sixty-three Families that trade honestly and don’t

give a damn whether our next port of call likes our last one. We’ve had to

make a forceful point of it now and again, but we maintain that principle, and

so do you. We don’t give a damn about stationer quarrels—and stations’

accepting that fact has created peaceful commerce. It means you don’t have a

Cyteen mega-ship pushing in at, say, Venture, using the power of a planet to

play havoc with the market there. We don’t have some fuss between Cyteen

crew and Mariner crew touching off some corporation on Pell. Peace

exists

because stations can’t touch each other, except through us, and

we

don’t take

sides. “Stationers can be as weird and as different as they like. They can have

their quarrels. The Families have very simple interests: the safety of our ships,

ownership

of our ships, our freedom to go where and when we decide to go—

and the

peace

we enforce simply by the exercise of our freedom.”

Peace—existing

because

of the ships. That was a strange way of looking at

a ship’s function. Peace wasn’t an issue, here in the First Stars ...

He thought of that ship on A-mast. Yet. “The EC,” Neihart said, “has

never

grasped the situation out here. The EC

hasn’t figured out that you here today, the very Families that have kept their

stations alive, are on the verge of economic ruin. They don’t see that their

program has worked incredible hardship on this station—but more to the

point, they’re not set up to care. They answer to their member corporations. They promise things they can’t deliver, but they can pass the blame out here

and nobody back on Earth can check the facts. If they had good sense, if they

gave a

damn

about the people living on the stations they

claim

they own,

they’d have built more pushers. They’d have sent out probes seeking jump

points. They’d have poured all their resources into repairing and modernizing

your

ships, to expand Alpha’s commerce, to

compete in the Beyond, to

join

the trade rather than try to dictate its future. They could have done all that. But they haven’t. Why?

Because they’re obsessed with control. Never mind

the fact they don’t own Pell or any of the stations beyond, not even by their

own definitions. The last core built at Sol was Venture’s. They actually don’t

own Venture anymore, but they haven’t figured that out yet. For reasons

which are frankly beyond my personal ability to understand, they evidently

can’t comprehend that they could have a profitable trade with Pell and the

Beyond—once they get there—if only they’d give up this notion that

everything in space

belongs

to them. Even now there’s no damn reason that

four more pushers, even before they find a viable FTL route, couldn’t bring

Sol peaceably and profitably into commerce for which Alpha could be the

gateway. A constant stream of Sol exotics could revitalize these oldest

stations.”

God, Ross thought, how many times had

that

come up during his lifetime?

Two ships. Two shipments. Ten damn years apart. Even without the diversion

of those shipments to

Rights

, what they’d carried historically to Venture

didn’t

begin

to compete in the market

Finity

implied was arising out beyond

Venture. With four more pushers ...

ten, twenty, coming in a year apart ...

“They can’t seem to grasp why, if Alpha merchanters

had

a longhauler that

worked, they’d be welcome at Pell, welcome at Cyteen, that they’d be

welcome

in the trade. The obvious answer to the problem, if somehow the EC

could be made to understand it, is to hand

Rights

over to the Rodriguezes, or

the Monahans, or the Gallis or the Rahmans, who could actually run her—

once they put a meaningful cargo hold on her. If

we were able to make that

clear,

if

we were able to make them understand—but they’ve never listened,

never truly tried to understand.”

The bar had gotten quiet, and into that silence, James Robert said quietly:

“We need the power to make them listen.”

Now a solid murmur broke out at every table, and Ross, with Fallan and

Niall near him—tried to keep silent. To listen. To not get caught up in the

rampant speculation, the growing lists of pros and cons and what-the-hell’s-

Finity-saying?

He was bridge crew, youngest, not quite seated, but bridge crew. He was

supposed to maintain a steady calm—but he didn’t feel calm. He looked at JR

Neihart with no less envy—but now with questions roiling in him that were

answerless, because no matter the answers station could offer, so long as that

ship was being built as she was, there were just—no choices. No other place

to be. No other rules available. No other future. Alpha spacers had been hanging on for years, taking what they could get,

and knowing that the whole system of trade was changing, and knowing,

knowing

that station couldn’t bring them into that new era with

Rights

sucking up every resource. Year after year, from when he’d been a junior-

junior, they’d been building that ship. All the funds, all the materials pushed

out from Sol or brought in from Bryant’s went to

Rights. Alpha crews had

muttered at it, sworn at

Rights

from time to time, laughed at

Rights

when it

made its aborted run. They’d had dark thoughts that Abrezio must be lining

his pockets in the process—but where could he go to spend it all?

There was

certainly no visible evidence of luxury living. They passed from anger at

Abrezio to anger at the managers Sol sent them. That

Rights

and her hire-on crew would perform as advertised to do—

nobody believed that any longer. They’d

seen

how well sim-training worked. They’d heard how her crew had failed on

Qarib. And yet, JR reminded them, the first FTL crews had

all

been sim-trained,

human beings, even if they were azi. The real breakthrough was the tech

itself. Using that tech ...

If you were willing to lose multiple ships and lose

multiple crews, you could figure it out. Eventually. Expendable people. Limitless resources. The only place other than Cyteen

that had truly unlimited resources—including people—was Sol system. JR was right: it was crazy that

Rights

should be this kind of priority at

Alpha ...

unless there was some plan the EC wasn’t talking about, like Sol

being close to

making

the breakout people had been speculating on forever. Maybe it

was

trying. Maybe they were desperate enough they could send an

endless stream of ships until one got through ...

And there was that other point he’d made, the same observation Fallon had

made only hours ago: blue-coats

were

in greater and greater evidence on the

Strip, markedly so in the last few sleepovers. How many?

How many had

been hired and trained to fill a ship not designed for cargo?

They had no idea. But if

Rights

did get to Bryant’s, if it moved to try to lay down EC law in

some station Pell-ward of here, there was sure to be trouble. Peace, JR had said, existed

because

the Families were the buffer. Peace ...

existed

because ...

Red flashers started rotating in the ceiling. Somebody banged a mug on the bar hard, repeatedly, and a Santiago

jumped up atop the bar, scrambling to her feet, shouting, “EC’s shutting us

down!

Blue-coats!

They’re shutting the doors!”

“The hell!” somebody up front shouted. “They got

no

right!”

“Stow the chains!”

“Run for it!” It was a

Galway

voice, Pardee’s, and nerves reacted—Ross

found himself moving. Niall and Fallan and the rest moved—

no

blue-coat

was going to lay hands on critical crew of

any

ship. Niall led the way to the

fire door. Santiago

crew came over the row of tables from the front, eight of them,

cutting them off, and then jammed up in the aisle as others did the same. Ross

left Mary T and Ashlan, went over the next table, knocking two beer mugs to

the floor as he went, but a press of bodies blocked that row, too, half the red-

dyed, overcrowded room all trying for the side exit, and by now the klaxon

sounded: doors were closing, mechanical, unstoppable. “Well, this is a mess.” Ross turned to Mary T and Ashlan, on the other side

of the table. Mary T was holding her arm, looking pained. “You all right,

Mary?”

“I’ll live.”

The doors had all shut, trapping a good many people in the bar. Niall and

Fallan and Pardee had got out. Some, however, hadn’t even tried for the doors. JR Neihart was up at the

bar with a number of

Finity

crew. The two bartenders and the wait staff were

there. So were a number of other outsiders, one with a captain’s gold tabs,

another with the compass rose and 1 of a first-seat navigator. Then there was a

straggle of Santiagos, several Qaribs, and a handful of Firenzes, people Ross

knew at least by sight. The frenzy was over. Everyone stranded inside was calm, quiet. Usually

the doors would have re-opened by now, at least one door would, and the

blue-coats would be taking names. The doors stayed shut. Which made him wonder what was happening on the far side of the doors. “Kettle of fish he’s raised,” Ashlan said. “Station’s upset.”

And Station had been listening to it all, Every word. Of course it had. The shouting had died down to angry cursing. He looked to where

Galway

crew had been seated. “Niall and Fallan got out,” Ross said, looking around. “So did Pardee and

Aymes and Aubrey, looks like. God, what a mess.”

“It wasn’t illegal,” Ashlan said. “It wasn’t illegal, our being here.”

It was a question: What could station make of it?

Fomenting a riot, if

station really wanted to make an issue. But putting them in one bucket with the outsiders?

Could get damned ugly on the Strip, if they lumped Alpha crews into the

Neiharts’ actions. “They’re sure taking their time,” Mary T said. Wasn’t the first bar raid for any of them. It happened. Station could be

touchy. Usually there was a write-up, sometimes a fine. Usually bystanders

got out of it. Laying a hefty fine on the outsiders alone, however, might not be what

station wanted to do. Several minutes went by and still there was no move to open the doors. “We could have more than the usual trouble, here,” Ashlan said. “Well, hell with it,” Ross said. There was one group intact, over by the bar. Finity

hadn’t run. Finity’s

two senior-most captains and several of her

seated crew were calmly ordering drinks, as the red lights kept flashing,

which meant it was clearly against the law to serve alcohol. But the

bartenders of Critical Mass were quietly drawing beers, and food was arriving

from the back. A woman who’d sat on the bar, perhaps for refuge, slid down

behind, and got a bottle of wine out of cold storage. Well, that was a few more regulations the meeting was breaking

“What are we going to do?” Ashlan asked. “Ross?”

Ross shrugged. “Don’t know where’s more interesting now, out on the

Strip or in here. Looks like the bar’s still functional. And they’re serving. Hell, if they arrest us, at least the company will be interesting. Wait it out. See

what happens. All we can do.”

Mumtaz

and

Little Bear

captains joined

Finity’s. Nomad’s

captain had made

it out the fire door. So had all the Galways present, except the three of them. There were maybe fifteen, twenty of the Mumtazes, five or so of the Little

Bears, and a few of the Nomads. The talk was all casual, nothing of outrage,

nothing against the administration. Took a while for the lights to go back to normal, and a few minutes more

for the main door to open, letting in a good seven or eight blue-coats with

tasers at the ready. But by that time everybody was seated, with drinks, a few of the

Finity

crew peacefully playing cards, while the officers stood and chatted. Section i

Chapter 3

If

ever

there’d been a wrong man for a job ...

Ben Abrezio resisted the temptation to call civil security and remove Enzio

Hewitt from

any

authority involving the Strip, for actions contributory to a

riot. A demotion, however, would break the Cruz-Hewitt problem wide open,

would be a decade-long issue thrashed out in communication with Sol, and,

Hewitt being the later appointee, Hewitt was the one who

might

still have his

backers in office. It would be stupid to do it—but,

damn

, it would feel good. There were cameras in the Strip’s bars, shops, and hotel hallways that

automatically cut on—for safety and legal purposes—in event of an

emergency, such as a takehold order ...

or a mandatory securing of an area. The cameras and microphones in Critical Mass had recorded everything, and

what that footage told anyone,

anyone

with the slightest understanding of the

situation, was that the police raid on the meeting in Critical Mass had been a

questionable call. Highly

questionable. Not so much as a hint of violence had

come from the assembly. No advocacy of violence. Now, thanks to Hewitt’s order, they had twenty-four individuals detained

as participatory in or inciting a riot, and numbers still accumulating for the

injured. Unfortunately, as that vid clearly showed, the meeting had been, if

not exactly quiet, orderly and

completely

legal until security, Bellamy

Jameson, formerly head of all Alpha security and now under Hewitt’s

command on the Strip—had flashed the emergency warning and decided to

move in, at which time spacers, already on edge, already distrustful of station

security under Hewitt’s rules ...

reacted. Two agents had been shoved to the ground and trampled in the side-exit,

one with a concussion, and then, masterpiece of planning, Jameson had

locked the bar down entirely for three-quarters of an hour, causing even more

trouble dockside, as irate Alpha spacers argued with the police and tried to

rescue their fellows trapped inside. Maybe,

maybe

Jameson had been smart to focus outrage on those

locked

doors rather than have a traveling disturbance hit the Strip and gather force as

it moved from bar to bar, but if security hadn’t raided the meeting in the first

place it wouldn’t have been an issue. He suspected, knowing Jameson, that

he’d had a choice in one but not the other. Hewitt had ordered him to move in

and he’d done what he could to save a damned mess. Fortunately—thanks,

perhaps, to Jameson—they had

not

had a spacer riot on their hands. Inside, as

the footage showed,

Finity’s

crew had set the tone. Those locked in had

relaxed, quieted down, and by the time the doors opened, the people in Crit

Mass had been surprisingly cooperative. Abrezio didn’t trust the calm that currently lay over the Strip. Not in the

least. Hewitt had started something that could flare up again without warning,

and he, Ben Abrezio, had to make certain it didn’t. Damn Hewitt, who was currently, conveniently,

unavailable. They had

Captain James Robert Neihart and crew, backed by Xiao Min, Asha Druv and

Sanjay Patel, all madder than hell,

with

an issue, and they had local ships with

personnel in lockup that didn’t damned well belong there. Adding to the

debacle—that firedoor net had caught local captains Giovanna Galli, Diego

Rodriguez, and Niall Monahan, also madder than hell, and worst of all,

unjustified use of force had injured no few spacers, one of them elderly, as

some fool had tased Galli’s fourth-shift helmsman and caused a pile up right

in the doorway. Hewitt and his high-handed security rules

needed

to be put on the next

pusher back to his beloved, oh-so-superior Sol-station. God ...

didn’t he

wish?

Was there

any

justification?

Could

the meeting have broken up in riot?

That hadn’t been

anywhere

suggested in anything JR Neihart had said, never

mind he’d implied a hell of a lot more that wasn’t to Abrezio’s personal

liking. But there’d been nothing—absolutely nothing—actionable, however

uncomplimentary to the Company ...

which did

not

administer Pell, which

was

Finity’s

port of registry, and by tradition,

Finity’s

rules applied inside that

bar—so long as there was no abuse of person or bar property. Fact was, these ships were outsiders, allowed to dock here, as of course

they had to be: a station had never refused docking. Fact also was, Critical

Mass was under

Finity’s

rules. Fact might be that

Finity

had abused traditional

courtesy, that

Finity

had assembled allies and made fairly inflammatory

statements to Alpha’s local haulers, but it wasn’t illegal unless it caused

illegal action—which it had not ...

yet. Did it warrant careful monitoring?

Yes. Did it warrant lockdown?

No,

dammit. And now

he

was in the position of having to explain the mess to their

elite visitors. Annoying truth: the calmest, most dignified of the lot had been

Finity’s

crew. Untouchable, at least in their own minds. Hewitt’s office had objected

to his order to Jameson to stand down, to release the locks and just get names

and statements, and

not

to arrest anybody in the bar. Offenses, Hewitt’s office

insisted, had been committed, laws had been broken. And Hewitt’s policy

trumped

Finity’s

rules. According to Hewitt’s office, Hewitt himself being ...

unavailable. Arguable, to say the least, but more to the point ...

did you charge spacers

who’d sat fairly quietly through a now-notorious and inflammatory speech, a

bar raid, and the tasing of seated crew—with quietly sitting and drinking

alcohol under a lockdown?

They hadn’t been drunk. And while it was illegal

to

serve

alcohol under those conditions, it was not chargeable against the

spacers; it was against the bar owner, who also had a legal responsibility to

judge a situation and apply prudent measures. Spacers had a keen sense of the ridiculous. And this was way over their

tolerance. If he’d allowed Jameson to do as Hewitt had ordered, had he had

Jameson issue those citations against the spacers who were remaining calm

inside a bar under siege ...

he’d have a real uprising on his hands. So what did he do?

Fire Jameson?

Jameson’s

emergency text had been his

only warning about Hewitt’s order to move in and arrest those remaining in

the bar. Jameson had practically begged him to countermand that order. Jameson was his own appointee. Jameson had been, pre-Hewitt, a decent and

compassionate officer. And when the time came to challenge Hewitt,

if

it

came, he’d need a lot more reason than a hazy call on a bar fight, and

Jameson was his best bet as an inside witness who might be on

his

side. So ...

what?

Apologize to

Finity

and their allies?

That might quiet the

noise on the Strip, but locally, among Alpha’s permanent residents, Jameson’s

hard line with the supposed threat of riot was already playing well. Somehow,

though stationers had no access to the security files,

somebody

had released

vid to the news, vid showing the chaos outside Crit Mass, vid focused on the

injured security officers and entirely missing the grey-haired, frail old man

now being treated in the infirmary. Thanks to that vid, station sentiment

would call Jameson a hero, and Hewitt would take full advantage of it. Not exactly a stretch to figure who’d sent that carefully edited vid. But the impression had been made and strong police action made

citizens

feel safe. It advised drunken spacers that rules were rules, and kept problems

on the Strip from exiting the Strip. Regardless, the Stationmaster’s job was to smooth out the messes others

dropped in his lap. Apologizing to

Finity

and their lot might read as good politics on the Strip

if

he stood Bellamy Jameson down at least long enough to get the problem

visitors on their way and clear of Alpha, but that didn’t put the blame where it

was due. Explain the situation privately to the outsiders?

Hell if he wanted to

admit the massive problems lurking beneath the surface in Alpha station

admin. Whatever he did now, Hewitt would make the most of it. Lose, lose. For the sake of the permanent citizens’ peace of mind, he had no choice but to

back Jameson. Didn’t mean he couldn’t let Jameson know, privately, that he

was not happy and that

he

wanted a call involving any unrest on the Strip, no

matter the hour and no matter what Hewitt ordered. Before any action was taken. Most frustrating of all, after all was said and done, that speech of Neihart’s

still

didn’t answer what in hell

Finity

was really up to. It wasn’t casual blather

about spacer rights that had

Finity

calling a formal meeting with other crews,

talking about ownership of ships, and stations’ obligations to repair whatever

broke down. And—

dammit

—where in

hell

did

Finity’s End

come off saying Alpha

should do more than any station of its size and resources did nowadays?

Sure,

he could have tried to redirect some of those resources from Sol, but that

would have gotten him kicked out of office and someone else ...

like

Cruz ...

put in, which would have meant

no

resources going to fix the Family

ships

or

the station residencies. As it was, he’d gotten what he could from

Venture and fought a running battle with Cruz for allocation of those

resources as well. He was

not

a bad administrator. At least one of Alpha’s ships had stood up for him. There was that. Dammit, Neihart

insisted

Pell wasn’t behind his visit, but it increasingly

felt like a Konstantin action, right down to the splashy system entry and the

subversive, silver-tongued speech in the bar. Emilio Konstantin himself loved

a camera. Slick, smooth, never a stumble, never a search for words ...

and

this JR Neihart was every bit as good, possibly better. Certainly better

looking, if nothing else. It was even possible Konstantin had provided the

language. Hell ...

hearing it, he’d almost found

himself

agreeing with

Finity’s

captain and feeling he wasn’t remotely the administrator he tried to be. But what could Pell gain by agitating Alpha spacers to make a claim the

EC would never grant?

Discontent?

Disorder?

Force

him

into defying the EC?

Was this the beginning of the end?

The someday-payback he’d feared for

years?

Trade

Rights

for food to feed his people?

For the continued loyalty of

Alpha’s spacers?

Dammit. One thing was for damn sure: There was nothing innocuous in the

proposals

Finity

was trying to float out on the Strip. And, God help him, what

if the implication was true?

What if the EC was building more of these mega-

ships in anticipation of a breakout, and training crews to put

his

spacers out of

business?

Damn. And it all played against those numbers that rested in that floor safe

under his desk—it all played against the possibility that

that

was the real

issue ...

that Sol

was

that close to arriving on the scene. Was it possible Hewitt had actually called it correctly?

Was

a riot against

the station and the project Konstantin’s goal in coming here?

Local captains

demanding

Rights

in return for perceived neglect?

Problem was, there wasn’t damn-all he could do to shut

Finity

up, other

than declare martial law and line the Strip with blue-coats....

And wouldn’t

that

win hearts and minds on the Strip?

Besides, the words had already been said, the ideas planted. Maybe he was overreacting. Maybe Pell simply wanted to know whether

Rights

could be brought into play, and to know what Andy Cruz was able to

do. Finity

had certainly shown

Rights

what an experienced crew could do ...

in spectacular and public fashion. That entrance had scared hell out of him

and most everybody else on the station. Rights

’ morale and the Company’s

prestige were affected. And wounded pride, especially in a man like Cruz, could result in very

stupid actions. Was that it?

Had Neihart been sent to push his administration to risk that

expensive mass of metal in an act of political bravado?

Solve the problem in

one spectacular demonstration of hubris?

If only ...

if only

...

security had stayed out of the picture. Let the

meeting reach its conclusion. Maybe he’d have a clue what

Finity

was really

up to. He damn sure wouldn’t be facing a meeting with angry ship captains. At this point, whatever he did or didn’t do, he looked bad, Cruz looked

bad, the EC looked bad, and spacers as a class

liked

the EC to look bad. Any

misstep was an incident to be told and retold as fast and far as FTL ships

could travel. He’d known,

known,

dammit, that the decision to build an indisputably

company-controlled ship of

Finity’s

class would cause trouble on a scale

impossible to predict. He’d tried to advise against it, when Cruz first arrived,

and gotten ...

Hewitt. Earth had

never

understood why the first pusher

crew ...

ancestors of these Neiharts in more ways than blood ...

had refused,

after that first voyage, to hand over their ship to a new crew. He

knew the

passion behind that refusal, having spent his life on a star-station, having dealt

directly with spacer crews for over two decades. Cut one and another bled. And the third would come at you bent on mayhem, even if the whole lot had

been at loggerheads a minute before. The EC had never understood that out here, beyond the reach of anything

but pusher-ships, there was Station culture ...

with its own set of ties ...

and

there were spacers, with theirs. And if one wanted to refine the issue—there

were the First Star stations and there were the Farther Stars, including

humanity’s offshoot, Cyteen, and its wild growth. They were all human, but

in spite of the DNA ...

the differences became profound. Their respective

worlds were contained and isolated from one another. The physical and

psychological requirements of their separate worlds, their separate lives, were

just ...

different. You had to accept that. Deal with it. Because out here, there

was

no escape. Stations needed spacers and spacers needed stations. In that, he and James Robert Neihart were in complete agreement. And

Neihart’s notion that the Family ships provided a buffer between stations was

dead on. But all that stood between Alpha and Earth Company headquarters

on Earth and on Sol Station were the pusher ships. And he doubted the EC

admin had the remotest idea how the pusher crews thought—they’d been

caught by total surprise when old

Gaia

had told them they weren’t giving up

their ship to another crew, and the pushers had only gotten stranger over time. Sol Admin found it puzzling enough that they were dealing with two different

histories in the two pushers that still served them. Santa Maria

had been the

ship to discover the terrifying mystery at Beta, and yes, that ship kept

extremely close tabs on their people at all times. They believed Cyteen was

heading for an alien apocalypse—it was not a topic you ever wanted to

mention with them; and during their Alpha layover they usually held at least

one lengthy religious service with live candles, which made safety officers

nervous. Atlantis,

when that pusher was in port, was just, well, there for a

party,

and breakage happened. Fact was, the two pusher crews lived in utter

isolation for a decade at a time, inward-folded, time-dilated, and

different. Company headquarters didn’t understand such mindsets, and probably

wouldn’t give a damn if they did. Not because they were inherently cruel—

historically, the EC was a generous employer—but because they were a

company. As long as the pushers did their job, just like any of their

employees, any idiosyncrasies of behavior during their station time were just

something they let Station management handle as delicately as possible—

ignoring a few broken rules in the interests of keeping the system going. It wasn’t that the EC didn’t understand different cultures and world views. Sol had Earth, historically a mass of conflicting cultures. Sol had Mars

colony, mostly research, and the Belters, insystem miners, and Lunabase ...

all ...

all

...

extensions of the Earth Company, the most remote only a few

light-hours apart. There were, one understood intellectually, many differing

mindsets to be considered, but all interconnected, not just historically but, in

the case of the space-based units, by the company itself. For the EC, that second connection was the only one that mattered. The

workers at the facilities were employees, and the only rules that mattered

were those the company set. Cultural differences were on their own time. The whole attitude was fundamentally different. Earth’s culture didn’t

embrace multi-generational groups isolated for years at a time, groups whose

only

constant

reality was what had become the Family, or the Station, and, in

the case of the spacers, groups who

could

if they cared to, tell a station to go

to hell, and just leave. Forever. That

was what the EC truly didn’t understand, had never come face to face

with. Independence. Real

self-reliance. Spacers no longer needed the EC for

survival. That had been true from the time the Pell station core had left

Venture, bound for a star with a living world. Neihart had made a lot of good points in what he’d said. He’d brought

clarity to a problem Abrezio had been dealing with for years. The EC at Sol

had no concept of what it took to make the star stations run smoothly ...

in

that, he agreed with Neihart. And one day, perhaps soon, FTL was going to

replace the pusher-traffic to Sol; and Sol was going to be plunged into a new

reality, one in which decisions had to be much faster, decisions whose

consequences were months, rather than years, away. At which point, which had been

his

thought while listening to Neihart’s

speech, Ben Abrezio could play a key role in making that transition run

smoothly. It was a safe bet that the first FTL ship

out

of Sol would bring EC reps with

notions that wouldn’t make much sense in the First Stars, let alone as far out

as Venture. But the EC’s

goal

would be profit—the same as everyone else’s. He

understood the situation. He

had psychologically bridged that gap for

years. He

could direct Sol’s first steps with experience and common sense,

and

make

the EC that profit ...

only grant they sent him somebody willing to

stand still, watch, listen and learn. Unlike, God help him, Cruz and Hewitt. Cruz was too mono-focused on the

Rights of Man

project, and not even

twenty years at Alpha had given him the knack of getting cooperation on the

Strip ...

a useful art, while running a project indefinitely sidelining local

shippers’ needs. Cruz wasn’t the man to be setting general station policy or

negotiating with spacer crews. His interests weren’t the EC’s, either. His

interests were accomplishment. Recognition. And his social skills were mildly

wanting. Hewitt ...

God help him double ...

had only one response to a challenge. Force. He’d almost bet that raid on Neihart’s meeting was

meant

to rough up

the visitors, and that the firedoor corridor being put in the hands of six-month

recruits to Enforcement was a setup designed to draw blood, no matter whose. Hewitt wasn’t socially skilled either—but Hewitt knew how to touch off

tempers and take advantage of the emotional reaction. And while Bellamy

Jameson had brought the force, he’d bet Hewitt had sent Jameson the

personnel, then sat back, listened, and waited. Hewitt had let Neihart lay it out

and work the pitch up and up, and

then,

right before Neihart’s denouement,

he’d slammed the hammer down, intending to make the most of whatever fell

out. Bet on it, Hewitt had also taken notes on who was there, so he had his little

list of locals he could pressure, including, possibly, the bar owner. Cruz

managed to offend people because he had his notions of entitlement, but he

wanted to be liked, and he wanted to be important. Hewitt didn’t give a damn

about being

liked. He just wanted to be in charge. Wanted power. The two of

them together—Cruz and Hewitt—God knew, regular people who came off a

pusher-ship passage were just a little odd. The voyage did that. But whatever

demons personally drove them, whatever ambitions had driven these two,

with their aides, to become the men the Company chose to send out here—

and whatever the voyage

itself had made them, ripped loose from family,

friends, nation and personal ties—

Neither of them was what the Company needed in control here, working

with spacers, or with the Farther Stars and whatever deal

Finity

had brought

in with them. Not now, and

especially

not once Sol joined the FTL routes. The EC needed a guiding beacon, not a supernova. Ben Abrezio hoped to be that guiding light. He hoped to matter hugely to

the human future, and thought that might actually be possible, depending on

how he handled this situation. He hadn’t anticipated it, but it presented an

opportunity. If

he

could negotiate with these ships, right here, right now, if he

could possibly secure some agreements with Pell, agreements even leading to

increased supply and ring-docking in Alpha’s future, he might be able to set

up a system so healthy and potentially profitable that any EC representative

arriving after the fact would be forced to think twice before undermining it. He couldn’t do it within the transit-time of a message to Sol, but Sol’s entry

would be more symbolic than substantial at first. The Sol-based EC would be

feeling its way. At first. If those coordinates he had in the safe panned out,

if

goods started flowing

from Sol, more diverse and more exotic than Pell, the introduction of those

goods from Sol into the interstellar market would have to be finessed. That was the rough spot. Konstantin would

not

be happy with the

competition: Pell’s economy would take an initial hit, with Earth’s biological

riches fully in the game. But things would level out. Pell had its value, as

Alpha would, a bridge between the Cyteen and Sol markets and a necessary

buffer between two very different mindsets. Damn. It was a scary place to stand, but the potential ...

Sol

was the one power that could challenge Cyteen, if Cyteen, with its

engineered populations and reckless expansionist notions, became a problem,

and Pell was, whatever else, still linked to Earth in history, in ethics, in law, in

traditions ...

Damn ...

Definitely scary, but if the Konstantins played

their

cards right,

Pell could become a

new

Sol, a bright new future for mankind. If he could start those negotiations with Pell here at Alpha, during this

visit ...

he could become the central point of exchange, in touch with both

Pell

and

Sol, able to

be

the bridge. What hadn’t

Finity

had time to say in that meeting?

Anything new?

Or

critical?

Damn Hewitt for the timing. Was

Rights

becoming a Family ship an idea the Neiharts had come up with

on their own?

Or was it Konstantin’s power play, to push the EC into a

corner?

Did it really matter?

Regardless who was pushing the buttons, he was

damned sure

not

going to hand over his largest card as the opening bid in a

game he wasn’t even sure was the right game to play. He’d believed for years

that the Konstantins wanted to force the First Stars’ stations into mothballs

and leave Sol sealed in the past as long as they could—it had surprised him to

hear Neihart so openly admit to that. It was unthinkable that Sol would

never

find an FTL route, but every year that arrival was delayed gave Pell that much

more time to strengthen its position. He had absolutely no doubt that the

Konstantins carefully controlled Pell’s export, and that the biostuffs that made

it past Venture and Bryant’s were barely enough to fill Alpha’s standing

purchase orders was no accident. Supply trickled. It did not flow. And that

was policy. Pell wanted them not to die—but not to live that well, either. When Sol broke out, Pell wanted Sol occupied with reviving its own,

determinedly loyal, stations. It had been a long, long time since Alpha had gotten all its biostuffs from

Sol. Pell was far faster in trade. His predecessor, with Pell to fill the gaps, had

depleted the reserve that Alpha had traditionally maintained when shipments

were years rather than months or even weeks apart, a reserve against the

possibility of pusher-ships lost in transit. One of his own first decisions,

coming into office, was to build that reserve back up ...

only to have Pell cut

them off entirely, following the infamous theft of the

Finity’s End

blueprints. Relations had thawed, trade had resumed, but then Sol’s pusher shipments

shifted completely over to materials for

Rights,

which threw Alpha and all the

other First Stars into

complete

reliance on Pell. Pell knew the situation, had actually increased the export of food along

with the price break, but they were still sending just enough to keep the

station alive. Uncanny, Konstantin’s ability to judge that margin. But it was

the ships that carried those supplies that were hurting the most, if he was

honest with himself. Without the exotics from Sol for those ships to carry out

of Alpha, their ability to cover dock charges grew increasingly problematic. Pell had to know that if Alpha lost its ships to other stations—Alpha would

have to shut down. And if that happened by the

choice

of Alpha’s regular

ships, Emilio Konstantin avoided public censure, never mind he’d have

choreographed the whole thing. If Konstantin’s policy succeeded, Sol’s ships would arrive to find a

deserted station—maybe to a string of deserted stations. Potentially stranded. With only a light-bound message taking years to ask for help. Gruesome

scenario. Damn

the Konstantins!

He hadn’t signed up for this kind of problem when

he’d accepted his promotion twenty-plus years ago. First damn thing he’d

gotten had been the plans for that monster. He’d gotten those, done what had

to be done ...

and now—he could almost believe Konstantin had planned the

whole damned course of events

including

the theft of the plans. Smug bastard

had probably unlocked the door to his office and left the damned computer

on. And waved a cheerful farewell to the EC agent as he left. Well, he had beaten Konstantin at his own game. Despite Cruz, despite

Hewitt,

he’d

done his best for Alpha’s loyal ships. He’d met with the captains,

forgiven a few charges he could control, helped them through hard times. He

couldn’t think that Neihart’s rhetoric could peel them away—he couldn’t

think that spacers so long loyal could leave Alpha in the lurch. The Strip was

a home to them, unique in the places they visited. But he also needed to give them something,

something

to offset the lure

Neihart was dangling in front of their noses. They needed some hope that the

situation here on Alpha now was not going to be the situation tomorrow, that

trade was

going

to get better. The small ships could

not

compete at Pell. Neihart himself had said that. Ten years—one pusher-run. He needed to keep them loyal for that ten

years. If he transmitted those coordinates today, along with his fears regarding

Pell’s plans, Sol would have them in six years. He had no doubt Sol was

equipped to test that information and get some results within a year. If the

points were viable, Sol could have ships here within a decade—sooner, if they

were already building and training in anticipation of the discovery of jump

points. He could bring the local ships’ captains in on the secret, give them

hope, ask them to wait that ten years....

If he dared transmit. Dammit. Or, he could sit on those coordinates, could cast his lot with Pell, could

enlist

the help of these visitors, and they

might

save his station; but at what

price?

Without Sol’s imports to sell, Alpha would remain a poor cousin

surviving on Pell’s charity—unless the ever worrisome Pell-Cyteen business

headed for a trade war, and Pell decided it

needed

Sol’s backing, at which

point he could pull those coordinates out of mothballs and hand them over. That Pell-Cyteen business was hardly a certainty. Everyone feared what

Cyteen planned with its potential armies of clones, but all Cyteen

had ever

done was milk a bunch of rich fools and hand out FTL for free and build

stations out where no one else had ventured. He hated to depend on some

undefined hazard for Alpha to become a major player in this interstellar chess

game. Inside a decade, if he transmitted that data, reckless of eavesdropping bots,

he could put FTL in Sol’s hands. Time would lurch into rapid motion when

that happened. Everything would happen faster and faster. And spiral out of control if he wasn’t careful. He had to keep Cruz in check—keep

Rights

and its force under his control,

not Cruz’s or Hewitt’s, and keep Alpha’s loyal ships focused on reality, not

promises. That speech of JR Neihart’s was

not

innocent. Riots were not the

only threat to station security. Neihart was here to recruit the Families to some

nebulous idea, promise them whatever he had to promise and recruit them—

To what end was something he

had

to find out about before he made a

choice regarding those coordinates. He needed someone on the inside. Following the board-shadowing run to Bryant’s and back,

Qarib

had set

itself at odds with Hewitt and Cruz and the whole

Rights

project, and by

extension, Sol authority itself, calling Hewitt an agent of Satan, or the like. Santiago

was a possibility, and Julio and Diego Rodriguez were good people,

but whether they could keep anything from their crew was a question. With

Giovanna Galli and

Firenze,

he had extreme financial leverage, but subtlety

of approach and Galli were not even acquaintances. Section ii

Which left

Galway. She was Venture-built, but with no ties there in the last

few decades, station-time. And she was the largest, most modern of all the

ships that supplied Alpha. The Monahans could have opted, when they’d

gotten that ship, to head out to Pell and take their chances there, as other ships

had done. But they hadn’t. They’d remained loyal to Alpha. Old favors, old

history. Niall Monahan had a head on his shoulders. And did understand

discretion. Abrezio looked at the screen, at the names listed on Bellamy Jameson’s

report. Ship personnel who’d been at that meeting. Those who’d gotten out

before the lock down, those who’d remained inside. Galway

names on both. First shift who hadn’t escaped. First shift, including Niall Monahan, in the lot

who’d been intercepted and roughed up at the door. Their Nav 1 was the old

man in the infirmary. Oh. My. God. Damn Enzio Hewitt. Damn him. Damn him. Damn him. Human history

could turn on one fool’s heavy-handed order. He tapped a button. His secretary, Ames, answered. “Contact Captain Niall Monahan. Request his presence here at his earliest

convenience. And make certain that man of theirs in Mercy Infirmary is

getting the

best

care.”

Apologies were in order. Diplomacy was in order. Galway

had every right to be upset with station management. But if any ship was likely to feel unease in

Finity’s

arrival here—in a

change in the trade routes—

Galway,

as Alpha’s best and newest ship, definitely had reason to ask—

what was in it for

them. Chapter 3

“That the one?” Jen Neihart leaned past JR to tap the portable screen. The

image paused. Another tap and it zoomed in on a young man sitting down the

table from

Galway

’s Niall Monahan, smooth morph between images:

Finity

security had spaced their wearable cameras out at the fringes of the meeting,

to cover the room—the way they had spread out a web of anti-spook devices

to assure nothing sneaked into or out of their equipment in this stretch of very

comfortable sleepover rooms. JR nodded, not at all surprised that Jen had spotted the target on her own,

no matter that there were two other people in that shot who were fairly close

to her age group. “Easy on the eyes,” Jen said. “That one has his choice of sleepover invites,

I’m betting.”

“You mean—

he’s

good-looking enough

not

to be suspicious of

your

interest.”

Jen threw him a coy over-the-shoulder. “Why, Uncle James, sir, is that a

back-handed compliment?”

“Don’t give me that face. And a little respect, there.”

Jen laughed and tapped the screen to unpause the image, leaned an elbow

on the little wall-fixed desk to support her chin, intent now on young Ross

Monahan. Uncle James, sir,

indeed. She was, in fact, JR’s niece by blood, her mother

having been his late half-sister. And she’d taken ruthless

advantage of that

association among her peers from the moment he’d been voted senior captain. Jen had been a scamp from earliest days, but from the cradle she’d read

people the way nav read star charts, and she’d been a thorough pain in the ass

as a junior-junior—

way

too clever, way too few principles and way too quick

with the excuses. She’d been an angry, orphaned kid for a few significant

years, a kid far too smart for the rules, always asking why, constantly at war

with authority and, on one occasion, stripped of all privileges for three

shipboard months. Her aunt Frances, who’d assumed parental authority,

hadn’t known what to do with her—until hormones had finished their run and

Jen’s brain had settled down to ...

well,

finally

a real interest. And in what?

She’d focused, to shipwide amusement, on the one institution with which

she’d become so frequently and intimately acquainted. Security. It proved a perfect fit, particularly for undercover. She’d become smooth

enough to leave most of her targets thinking they’d almost gotten what they

wanted ...

a talent which had found a natural career on docksides from

Mariner to Venture—but not as the lightweight people thought she was. The

smooth-as-silk wiles she’d polished, getting away with mayhem on board,

had found whole new uses on this run. You wanted information station didn’t want to give you?

Put Jen on it. You wanted to know what another ship was up to?

Give Jen a couple of

days. Right now the question was how the situation in Critical Mass had shaken

out, locally—and what the local sentiment was about that faulty copy of

Finity

sitting up there. A night on the Strip, a few key hookups, and some serious talk with some

young man—Jen thought she could do it, easy as on Pell dockside. But ...

“A word of caution,” JR said. “Look at me, Jen. Look

at me.”

“Listening.” Watching the replay. Without the slightest flick of an eye in

his direction. “This is Alpha, Jen. Let that soak in. This isn’t even Venture. You

don’t

know it the way you know Pell or Viking. Local terms are different. It’s the

Strip, not dockside. They’re starting to call themselves merchanters—but the

station calls them spacers, as opposed to stationers, and never call them

shorthaulers. They won’t like that word, anyway. Their loyalties may be like

ours, to their ships and family, but their

pride ...”

He paused, trying to think

how to make the point. “What we call the Hinder Stars ...

they

call the

First

Stars, and with good reason. For a long,

long

time, the Hinder Stars were all

there was. These Families have never been beyond Venture. There’ve been

several

ships in their backgrounds, but only a small handful of stations. You’ve seen the Strip. This place is old and showing its age, but it has a long,

long history, not all of it sweetness and light.”

“Beta,” Jen said, with all the callous assurance of the young. “You book-know it. But you don’t life-know it, niece. It’s important here. Things flowed

from

that incident.”

Jen shrugged. “Beta Station went silent. Next ship in found it deserted,

everything left in place, just no people. The ship spooked out of there,

reported it. Nobody’s been back—not being

stupid.”

“Alpha and Glory sit right near it. And ever since, this station has been

Sol’s only link to the star-stations. Still is. But the pushers are down to only

two. And one of those two is ...”

“

Santa Maria

—who was the one that carried the news about Beta. I

know

that.”

“Santa Maria

cycles between this station and Sol, keeping that history

vivid, every couple of decades. It

owns

this sleepover that nobody uses

except

them and

Atlantis,

when they come in. And now they’ve had to open it up for

us. Biggest and best to give the pusher crews a special welcome—an exotic,

all-out luxury break from ten years of isolation. A special honor for the crews

who’ve sacrificed the most to keep Sol connected to what Sol made possible. Touchy point, that. Tread lightly and respect the favor they’ve done us. Pushers aren’t ancient history here. Sol

isn’t ancient history here. Us being

here, in

this

sleepover, which is theirs when they’re in dock ...

that’s going to

rankle with some.”

“Noted.”

“Don’t just note it,

respect

it. Got it?”

She blinked. Her lips pressed tight. But she dipped her chin, once. He

rarely had to take the tone with her, but it was important. And she would

remember, he had every confidence. She was just tight-focused on the image

of young Monahan, getting only-she-knew-what from every twitch he made. “The

possibility

exists that, if Sol

is

building a longhauler like ours ...”

“It could decide to use Beta as a jump point,” Jen said in clipped tones. “I’m up on all that. But nobody’s that stupid. Whatever happened at Beta

wasn’t natural causes and nobody in their right mind would risk spreading

whatever happened there.”

“Nobody on this side of the pusher route, but Sol doesn’t have the

perspective. For Sol, the ‘Beta incident,’ as they call it, is going to be, at best,

ancient history, at worst, a bogie tale from a ship in a hurry to get out of there. What Sol

might

do, in their frustration to escape the bottle they’re in, is

something this young man has every reason to fear.”

“Idiots,” Jen said. “Idiots who might draw whatever took out Beta to take out the station this

young man’s ship depends on. That’s

what he lives with. Sink into that

mindset. Fear’s real here.”

She tapped to pause the vid, and twisted her head to look at him, a slight,

worried frown line between her brows. “Some folk back on Mariner say that

would be a good thing. That we ought to just close Alpha and Glory down,

leave a nice big buffer around Beta, and just go on developing in other

directions. That if Sol wants to get out, they should be looking for a route

direct to Pell and leave the Centauris alone.”

Problem was, between Sol and Pell was a very nasty little flare star, UV

Ceti. It was a damned inconvenient place Sol occupied. “This is an EC station,” JR said. “And yes, you’ll hear Mariner natives say,

forget Sol. But Sol won’t let that happen. And in real life, people

know

Sol

won’t let that happen. And Alpha and Glory, sitting out here, closest to Beta

and all that went wrong there, depend on Sol. Emotionally, that’s their lifeline

—because they

know

the deep Beyond would cut them off in a heartbeat. Only thing

they

know about Mariner is that the EC never authorized its

construction, and that Pell and all the stations that came after destroyed their

way of life.”

“Well, they’d be all right if dealing with Sol didn’t mean dealing with the

EC. That lot’s rich, they’re crazy, and they want to run things. Look at that

ship up there—when this whole place is run down and falling apart.”

“A ship that’s a threat, niece. A threat in more than one way. You’ve seen

it: closer to Alpha we’ve gotten, the more blue-coats we see, and this is the

mother lode. Young, mostly male, and trained to fight, make no doubt. Bet on

it: that ship is no merchanter and it never intended to be. It’s designed to

move enforcement to Bryant’s, to Glory, to Venture—wherever the EC wants

them.”

“If it could move.”

“Possibly. But even if it shut down on that trial ...

that ship

will

move

someday. And when it does, when Sol breaks out—we don’t know that that’s

the

only

longhauler Sol’s building, do we?

They have resources. Once they

know how, they could send ship after ship filled with blue-coats. Earth’s had

wars from way back, people taking what they want by

force—because their

mindset’s all about shortage, in spite of all those resources. It’s something

we’ve left behind. You can’t draw borders in space. Freight has to move. We

know it. We need the stations, they need us, and if we don’t agree we settle it

with a barroom brawl and shake hands after in the infirmary. But that’s not the

thinking the EC will bring. I don’t think all these centuries have told them you

don’t own a moving rock. They’re going to bring their rules, they’re going to

bring more people than we’ve ever seen, and they think they own all the rocks

they can find. Territorial notions spreading at FTL speeds. We can’t let that

happen.”

“They say that’s why Cyteen is manufacturing people as fast as their

machines will make them.”

“Which—listen to me, Jen—is

why

we’re doing what we’re doing, trying

to make certain it doesn’t end up with station-folk and planet-folk deciding all

the questions. Which is why

you,

if you do this, have to use your head, and

remember that this

isn’t

Pell, this

isn’t

Mariner, and you

can’t take chances.”

“I get it that Alpha’s different. And I have to adapt. And that you really

don’t want to have to get me out of lockup.”

“Get it that, if you let something slip, it could be expensive. Real and

lastingly

expensive.”

She turned at that, head tilting on its palm-prop to corner-eye him. And

shrug. “Expensive enough you wouldn’t bail me out?”

“Expensive enough you’d be famous for it forever. And so would I, for

sending you. Not in a good way.”

“I’ll be careful.” Soberest look he’d ever seen on Jen’s face, even sidelong. “I really will. I do get what you’re saying. I don’t figure what these people

think, staying in this place. I don’t get what they want to fight over. I’m a

little scared.”

From Jen, that was major. “Stay that way. Shorthauler, Jen. Alpha hauler. Not a trace of the Beyond

in their thinking. Half the time they and the stations out here think in

pusher

time. Major,

major

factor in their thinking. They’re in a very little bubble

where time moves very, very slowly and things don’t change much. Supplies,

orders, trade choices ...

all need a built-in two-decade lag.”

She turned completely from the screen, squatted, leaning against the desk

support, to look up at him. “Why?

Why

do

they stay here?

I mean, I get that

the small ships couldn’t be competitive in the Beyond, but they could get in

queue for new ones at Venture.”

“It’s a long queue. A real long queue. These ships weren’t lucky, Jen. They

were in the wrong place when the purpose-builts began to be handed out. Venture doesn’t just give the ships away out of the goodness of their hearts

but on the reasonable expectation that they’re going to get a return on the

investment, with the ships they build carrying trade to and from lucrative

markets.”

“And the Hinder Stars ...

aren’t lucrative.”

“Not any more. These ships were operating here on a small, low-mass

trade in luxuries. You’re too young to remember when exotics came on a

regular basis from Sol. One shipment could provide enough to keep these

local ships in the black and Alpha in good supply. But FTL just slowly

changed things. And then those stolen plans made their way to Sol and it was

all material for

Rights,

from then on, no concern for the local ships,

except

from Alpha and the stations they keep alive.”

She glanced up at the screen, frozen on the moment where he’d said

Rights

should be given to one of the Alpha Families, and on the hungry look on

young Ross Monahan’s face. “Earth’s still

real

to this lot, Jen. Real—in the perpetual hope that they’ll

find

that route and have all the luck Pell had. There’s a mother lode of trade,

just waiting, on the far side, if Sol finds a jump point that leads to Alpha and

not to Pell.”

“What are the chances?”

“Astronomers think decent, at least. But it’s not a certainty.”

“They could shift base to Venture, get real ships. And still reach Alpha.”

“No point, really. It’s only for these older ships that the Hinder Stars make

sense. This lot ...

for them, everything, every hope, every reward comes from

the EC. And

only

from the EC. They’re stuck. So don’t speak too hatefully of

the Company. They may hate it more than you, but they’ll resent your saying

it.”

She grunted. “They’re still Family ships. Can’t tell me they aren’t just a tad

bit jealous of

Finity. Can’t tell me they don’t want out of here.”

She reached up, zoomed in again on that one face that did, indeed, stand

out from the rest. The old man next to him—that look was unfathomable. Those eyes had seen things a lot older than his current ship. But the young

one was wide open. No way that young man didn’t dream of having a

longhauler’s capabilities at his fingertips. The sleeve patch, below the tangled

knot of

Galway,

was the compass rose: Nav-track. A tighter zoom brought up

the 1.3 —which on a two-by ship wasn’t seated crew, just trainee, but—

Bright young man. To be first-shift nav trainee at his age—even on a

ship

Galway

’s size—meant a quick mind and a spookily good memory. But that

young man would know only a narrow set of routes to and from Alpha. Calc

that changed, but not that much. Not that demanding. The fire, however, the

interest—

Galway

would have seen

Rights

growing year by year on A-mast, fast

forwarded in time-dilated leaps of assembly, from girders to a massive new

reality. Salt in a small ship’s wounds, that would be. JR felt sorry for all of them. Pell was worried—slightly—about this reported mega-ship. To his observation, Pell didn’t yet grasp the half of it. The ship itself wasn’t

what they should be looking at. Run-down also didn’t describe that situation on Alpha. By the look of

things, the bar menu, and the response of the market to their cargo—Alpha’s

ship-building thus far had gained Alpha nothing other than a lot of EC

enforcers. Police. No station-folk idly passing an evening on Alpha’s Strip—

an iron separation of stationers from merchanter areas, fines and arrest

threatened. A dearth of shops and trinkets. Entertainment offered here might

have value as antiques, but some of it wasn’t working. Galway

’s captain, not that old himself, had just shaken his head and

glowered—no such wild thoughts in that one. The old one, Nav 1 by his

sleeve, was impossible to read. But the young man, one life away from a seat at

Galway

’s boards, might

dream, if only for a moment. “

Galway

’s Venture-built,” he said to Jen. “Modern, compared to the other

ships based here: the best they’ve got as a regular. I’ve tried to get history on

her—why she ended up Alpha-based; but I think it was favor-trading, EC at

Venture helping out the EC at Alpha. The old man beside him—I’m pretty

sure that’s Fallan Monahan, one of the real old-timers, off the pusher

Atlas. And that, mind you, is another very different attitude. Different. Just different

mindset.”

“Like Mum.”

“Mum actually knows this man.”

“Really?” Jen rolled the scene back, focused in a bit closer on the old man. “Not like Mum. He looks ancient.”

Section iii

“Mum minus a lifetime serving Alpha. A long time ago. Real long time.”

“Before us.”

“Definitely before us.”

“Could

Mum

talk to him?”

“Maybe. But right now—you picked out the one who’s talked to us. This

young man ...

Ross Monahan: He talked to Fletch after the lockdown. He’s

curious. He’s the kind of ambitious individual that could get tracked into

Rights,

if they could ever wash the Family loyalty out of him. Nav 1.3 , trainee

in a two-by, four-shift ship. Came over for a near-beer, introduced himself

politely, talked to Fletch, who told him there’d be more at another meeting, at

which point young Ross shut up and sensibly sat with two of his cousins until

the place opened up again, listening far more than he talked. Which is saying

don’t sell him short. He may be looking at

us.”

“How’s his dockside record?”

“Next to yours, immaculate.”

Jen mock-scowled at him. “Clean,” JR amended. “One disorderly connected with a birthday party. The lad’s a saint. That’s it.”

“Preferences?

Pairings?”

“No record. This crowded a dockside ...

that’s unusual here. Three ships

overlapping is rare. It’s a real small inbred circle, Alpha, so inbred you’d

better exchange genealogies with your potential partners. And you don’t find

stationers mixing here. So it’s possible there’s nobody he’s tied to.”

“Mmm.” She tapped the screen off and stood up, putting on her jacket. “You want him, Uncle, sir ...

you’ve got him.”

“Don’t get cocky, young lady. Remember what I said. Watch yourself. Keep us posted where you are. Don’t assume

anything. Don’t assume

he

’s not

looking for information. Don’t assume

station

isn’t.”

She turned and her face now was anything but coy or smug. “I absolutely

know what’s at stake. I

do

know. And this is absolutely

not

the place I want to

get stranded.”

Chapter 3

Rosie’s traffic was low for the hours between dinner and sleepover, those

hours when crew on liberty either had hooking up or serious gaming to do. There was a fivesome in a dice game in one corner and a couple of

determined drinkers with

Firenze

patches—things hadn’t gone well for that

ship today: test power-up of the cranky nav system had completely

failed. Two crew had gone out to

Firenze

today to try a programming fix. Two had

come back in deep disappointment. Ross ...

was just sitting. Waiting. Things weren’t going outstandingly well for

Galway,

either, or for any of

the regulars up and down the Strip. The blue-coats had made no friends

tonight. Sullen groups gathered ...

in various places a little less

monitored ...

grumbling among themselves, waiting—as the captains sorted

out what they

did

know. Galway

hadn’t called a crew meeting yet, for one very major thing:

because senior captain Niall had gotten a see-me from station admin. Whether

other captains had gotten the same, Ross was hesitant to ask, figuring the less

ships looked askance at each other or passed fragments of information, the

better for junior officers who should not be letting confidential bits of

business slip into the rumor stream. He wished Fallan would contact him. He’d heard nothing since he’d been

released from Critical Mass’s front door. But there was nothing, and so he sat

with Mary T and Ashlan, nursing one of Rosie’s specials, waiting for news,

radiating a warn-off to cargo-ops cousins who drifted in, seeking answers he

didn’t, at the moment, have. Yes, he’d been

at

the meeting. Yes, he’d stayed

inside

Critical Mass after

the blue-coats locked the doors. Yes, he’d heard what the Neihart captain had

to say, and no, he left opinions about that and about the blue-coats to the

senior officers for right now. Fallan had gotten roughed up, had gotten

slammed around in the melee, it wasn’t clear whether it had been the blue-

coats doing the shoving, but yes, he was damned mad about that. How was he

not?

How was any

Galway

crew not mad about it?

You didn’t shove an old

man into a wall, whoever you were, but until he heard from Fallan what had

happened he wasn’t expressing an opinion to anybody. Didn’t mean he didn’t have one. The blue-coats had gotten too damned

excited about shutting them in, and the crowd had gotten way too excited

about getting out before they got written up and before ships got fines. But

fact was, station authority had gone way over the edge, and if the blue-coats

were going to shut the doors, they should have shut them fast, not waited till

there was a jam in the outlet. Sure, there was a lot for station to quarrel with in what JR Neihart had said,

but that didn’t make it illegal. The station could

claim

Neihart was creating

unrest. But if the station tried to make it illegal to say that sort of thing, if it

was illegal even to say that maybe Alpha ought to do what Pell

and Cyteen

had done, and

give

the ship Alpha had built into Family hands—that was just

an opinion, wasn’t it?

Opinions weren’t illegal. And it wasn’t threatening riot. Was it?

Certainly there’d

been

no riot ...

not even raised voices ...

until the red lights had begun to flash. Give

Rights

to the Alpha Families, JR Neihart had said, and then, as if

those words had been a trigger, blue-coats had swarmed the meeting, and as

everybody jumped for the exits, they’d shut the doors, trying to trap those

present. It had gone absolutely crazy from there. It was only natural. Escape was what people did when there’d been a bar

fight and there’d be charges to settle. But it hadn’t

been

that. They weren’t, damn it, guilty of anything. There’d

been

no fight. Nobody

was guilty of anything, and the Neiharts, who’d had

the most to fear, had just sat there, calmly ordering drinks. That ...

had stopped him. He’d jumped for the doors along with Niall and

Fallan, but while they’d run for it, he’d delayed to ask himself what

Finity

was doing. How

they

were reacting. He’d thought—

This is stupid. Station’s

being the fool. Station’s in the wrong, not us. And the Neiharts aren’t budging. And just that quick, it had been too late: the Santiagos cut him off, trapped

him and Mary T and Ashlan, because of his delay. The side door had sealed

and the front door sealed, and he and two of his cousins had been standing

there behind the tail end of the Santiagos, who also hadn’t got out. He wasn’t wholly proud that he’d stayed that moment to look back, that he

hadn’t kept with his captain and crew, but he had, and there he’d been,

trapped in the bar, while chaos went on outside. So he’d gone up, ordered a beer, and paid his respects to JR Neihart. And stared, because the man unexpectedly looked him right in the eyes—

no smile there, no matter what the rest of the face was doing. It wasn’t threat. It was just presence, a powerful man wondering, he’d thought, just what this

Galway

navigator thought he was, or whether he was making a statement, still

being there, a wet-behind-the-ears jumped-up trainee,

nobody

to another

ship’s senior captain—cheeky even to

approach

another ship’s senior captain

or make his presence evident. And he hadn’t had an answer. He still didn’t. Didn’t know to this hour what he’d felt, beyond stunned and

upset. Damn the Neiharts, if they’d gotten

Galway

into trouble. Niall still wasn’t

back. There might be several captains called on the carpet. Would he like to sit nav aboard a ship like

Rights

?

Like

Finity?

In a

heartbeat. But trade

Galway

for it?

There were upgrades and then there were

quantum leaps. Scared hell out of him, it did. Just because the EC thought sim-training that

crew should be doable, didn’t mean it was. That

The Rights of Man

should become a Family ship—that

Rights

should

go to

them

, Alpha’s ship-Families—maybe to a merger of more than one....

Ross personally didn’t know how that would or could work out. He’d seen

Finity

come in. JR Neihart had said that hot entry was

necessary. JR Neihart

himself had been mid-list when the whole senior crew of

Gaia

had stepped

aside to put their young people in charge of

Finity’s End. JR Neihart had been

promoted up to senior at one go, and the same story with a lot of the crew,

because the big ships were a whole new universe—and older crew just

stepped down to advisory. That was what Fallan said. God. Scary prospect. And the

Finity

crew was all one family, knowing

each other. What would it be like to merge with

Firenze

or

Santiago,

whose

ship-speak wasn’t

Galway

’s

,

who didn’t read each other like a book?

He

couldn’t sit a mega-ship’s boards with the team he knew. He wasn’t sure

Fallan

could, the best they had. And trust their lives to some other team?

Hell, no. But then—any of them would be a damned sight better than any

stationer in the same post, wouldn’t they?

“Would you take it?” he asked his cousins, out of long mutual silence. They’d talked out their reactions to the blue-coats’ raid in the first five

minutes. “That ship. If they gave it to us ...

if they had us go in with

Firenze,

say ...”

“Rights?”

Mary T asked. “Hell, no. A monster ship designed from

smuggled blueprints?

Put together by engees who can’t get

Firenze

’s problem

fixed in three tries?”

“They did get it out of dock,” Ashlan said, in irony. “Nah,” Mary T said: “Too frickin’ big. Merge with the Gallis?

We’re

different. We’re not them. They’re not us.”

“We wouldn’t be blood-related to everybody,” Ashlan said suggestively. “Yeah, well, related often enough,” Mary T said. “What I hear.”

“Am not,” Ashlan said, old argument. “Me pa’s on

Santa Maria. Headed

for Sol.”

“More than

we’ll

ever do,” Ross said. “Unless they find the jump points,” Ashlan said. “And then, hell,

Rights

won’t matter. We’ll go there, and they’ll have shiny new ships just waiting for

us. Won’t have to share with anybody. That’s the promise, right?”

“Believe that when the codes are in my hand,” Ross said, drily. For as long

as there’d been FTL, the EC had promised that when Sol finally found that

jump point, they’d reward the First Star stations and the ships that had kept

the stations going. It was even possible there

were

ships like

Finity

just

waiting for them, when they could jump to Sol to claim them. Sol was doing its best in its isolation, to keep up with the technology that

came to it down the Stream. They—the ships that served Alpha—believed in

Sol and believed that when Sol finally found the route to the Hinder Stars, it

would continue to make Alpha its base. But damn if it wasn’t getting just a little difficult to keep the faith. Maybe ...

maybe those points

had

been found. Maybe

Rights

was just

waiting for them to be proved and that someday payoff was just around the

corner. Maybe

Rights

had been given to hire-ons to protect the essential Alpha

crews against the dangers of a ship built from blueprints and theory. It was

even possible that that ship and the blue-coats were here to defend Alpha’s

loyal ships from money-grubbing visitors. To protect their interests in that

lucrative trade. Somehow ...

he didn’t think that was why

Finity

was here. He wished the

blue-coats hadn’t intervened. He wanted to know what JR Neihart

would

have

said. “So what’s your bet?” he asked his cousins. “What

are

these outsider ships

here for?”

“Making trouble,” Mary T said flatly. “Wasn’t a thing wrong with what the man said. It’s

right,

what he said.”

“It’s

Rights,

isn’t it?” Ashlan muttered. “Rights of Man

...

the way Alpha

admin defines them. Maybe it means all those blue-coats to uphold those

rights according to the EC. Blue-coats get all the rights and the ships that

serve here don’t get any.”

Mary T frowned, rolled her eyes toward the overhead and surrounds. “You

don’t know who’s listening.”

That was the way it was. It hadn’t, Ross thought, been that way when the

day started. But that was the way it was now—that they had to think about

what they said and worry that somebody was listening. They always used a

little

discretion on the Strip. And Ashlan had said it in ship-speak, which

somebody might translate if they wanted to, but ...

“Listen

to us,” he said. “Listen to us running scared, who did nothing

wrong. Nothing. Why in hell did the blue-coats pick on Niall?

Why’s

he

been

called in?”

“Because they didn’t dare lay hands on a Neihart?” Ashlan said. “Those

four ships just about outnumber the blue-coats, all told. Station’s the one

running scared.”

“Fuist anois,”

Mary T said. Hush. Ross shoved his chair back on its slide. Got up from the table. Section iv

“Where are you going?” Ashlan said. “Nowhere,” Ross said, then caught himself. A surly tone wouldn’t help

matters. “I’m fine.” He lifted a hand. “Back in a bit.”

He had no such intention, point of fact. He wanted to find a cousin who

hadn’t

been locked down. His com wasn’t telling him a thing. He wanted to

know if Niall was back. He wanted to walk. To shake off the thoughts. He got as far as two frontages down when com did beep. It was Niall’s message. Check on Fallan ASAP. Mercy Infirmary, 210

green. Says he’s ok. Be sure. I’ll be there when I can. Infirmary?

His heart sped. And guilt settled in it. Of all people—Fallan. He began to walk much faster. Chapter 3

Niall Monahan. One of the good ones. The dependables. And not real damn happy with Alpha at the moment. “Come in,” Ben Abrezio said, and watched a sixty-year-old who looked

thirty walk in—

Galway

patch on a plain grey jacket, red and green and black

Celtic knot-figure on the patch: Abrezio had asked once, during a more

pleasant meeting. It meant something about unity, or some such. And unity was the item in question at the moment. Monahan’s face was

grim, brows knit. “Sit down, captain, please.”

Monahan didn’t move. “It was

not

an order from this office,” Abrezio said. “I understand a senior

member of your crew was injured in the commotion. How is he?”

“Haven’t been allowed to see him,” Monahan said. “Security has a

guard

on him. They

say

well enough. He’s an old man, damn it!”

“A mistake,” Abrezio said. “I’ll have the guards removed immediately.”

He tapped the intercom and gave the order, got a slight nod from Monahan:

acknowledgment. Nothing more. “Let me assure you, captain, that it was not

my order that put them there, as the lockdown was not my order, but I take

responsibility for station security actions, and the matter is being looked into

even as we speak. Station extends profound apologies ...

to all ships

involved. And to the establishment. And reluctantly, to our uninvited guests. Alpha appreciates its loyal ships, captain. We know you could be elsewhere. We are

sorry

for what happened.”

Monahan just stared, waiting, maybe, for a dismissal, apology delivered. “Sit down, captain. Sit down, please.”

Monahan moved the chair and sat down, no happier. Abrezio pushed the stop button on the session recording; Monahan’s brow

twitched. “There are things I’d like to say, off the record,” Abrezio explained, trying

to keep his voice from betraying his nerves. “We have a problem, here, which

was not helped by a security officer’s rash decision, and I hope to prevent it

from becoming much worse.”

Nerves, yes, worse than he’d ever suffered. So damn much depended on

the next few minutes. He got up and went to the sideboard to pour from a

carefully preserved bottle. The best he had. Scotch, real Scotch that had come

in by pusher, tended to lose its color over time, but it preserved the essence of

its unique flavor. He gave both glasses a generous pour. “The real stuff, this.”

Monahan took the glass. Waited. Abrezio sat down, took a sip and

Monahan did. “Cards on the table,” Abrezio said. “I’m worried about those ships and

why they’re here. Cyteen ...

is not the EC’s friend, and half that lot who’ve

come in here proposing changes is actively trading with Cyteen. Which is

Pell’s policy, and a deal they’ve worked out. That worries me. These outsiders

come in here, saying they want benefit for you ...

but it’s a question—why

should they come all this way?

Purely out of the goodness of their hearts?

I

personally find that difficult to believe. I have my suspicions Pell is deeply

involved, but I admit to a certain bias in that and I’d value your opinion on

their intentions. I’d very much value that. If you’ve

heard anything we

haven’t. What’s this talk about turning

Rights

over to you?

Is that the first

you’d heard of it?”

Monahan held the glass on his knee. Said nothing for a moment, then:

“You recorded the meeting.”

“I did.” No reason to deny it. “Then you know everything I know. My

opinion

is that they’re here

because

Rights

crew reached Bryant’s, and because

Rights

has tested her

engines, and that some plan has been triggered by those events. I’m not sure

what they’re offering. Right now it’s pie by-and-by, and a lot of talk about

Alpha Family crews taking over

Rights

, which I strongly doubt is going to

happen.”

A little edge to that statement. No surprise. “It’s not in the plan. But—not

to the disadvantage of Alpha’s loyal merchant trade, and not to Alpha’s

disadvantage, that much I can say. The Company appreciates loyalty—and it

reserves privilege for its loyal ships. You had a choice of stations and you

chose Alpha, even after Venture gave you

Galway.”

“No one

gave

us anything, sir. We earned that ship. We sat on that list for

thirty years, station time.”

“With Alpha’s backing. With Alpha’s release of

Atlas

to their breakers. We

are interconnected, Captain, and we take deep

pride

in

Galway. You’re our

finest, our best ...”

Monahan just looked at him. “The point is, yes, you’ve earned every benefit you’ve had. Absolutely. You

are

valued. I am personally sorry—and, yes, embarrassed—about the

unfortunate incident, and I

don’t

want a repetition. In order to prevent it

happening, I’m afraid I have to impose on that treasured loyalty a little more

right now. Please listen to what I have to say.”

A sip of the Scotch, a sideways glance at the still mostly full glass. “I’m

listening.”

“Thank you. We are, not surprisingly, concerned over this sudden,

unannounced influx of Pell-based ships. We suspect a more serious threat than

a look-see at

Rights. Pell’s close relationship with Cyteen concerns us. Venture’s growing ...

its Pell-ification, if you will ...

concerns us. We should

ordinarily and in all common sense be

allied

with Pell. But we cannot,

will

not, be taken over by them. We have our responsibilities. We

are

EC. And

how we deal with this situation could impact the future of far more than

Alpha. Finity’s

captain persistently said

we

...

and no matter how many times

I review it, that

we

remains ambiguous. We

can do something about it, was his

point, just before security interrupted the

meeting, and I mortally wish Neihart

had been able to finish that point and tell us who that

we

of his really is.”

He paused, giving Monahan a chance to fill in that information. He didn’t. “He talked a great deal about ships with combined interests, but what I

very much fear is that

Pell

is trying to get a presence here, to undermine EC

tradition and impose Pell’s interests on us, much as they have on Venture,

whether in collaboration with Cyteen, or in a precautionary move against

Cyteen. They’ve grown increasingly self-important, since the introduction of

FTL into the system. They would put themselves up as the new Sol, with the

power to dictate how

this

station runs. You must understand I

can’t

allow that

to happen. We

are

the EC’s voice, the only real connection they have this side

of the pusher divide. We must keep their base, the one they created and have

maintained for centuries, ready to welcome them. I fear Pell means to

challenge that loyalty, to take over control of the station, using our

vulnerabilities to force the EC out. I also fear they want to control the Sol

trade, when it joins the FTL circuit, cutting out our loyal ships. I fear they

plan to take control of the

Rights

build—promising whatever it takes to get

the local ships on their side, promises that

they’ll

not be bound to deliver on.”

Another pause. Monahan drew a breath. Shrugged. “Possible. Keep going.”

“It’s easy for the Neiharts to say what

Alpha

should do, whether or not it’s

possible. No matter they have

no idea

of our circumstances,

we’re

the ones

that came out looking bad. Pell sent that ship, a ship that has a

specific

grievance against us on the

Rights

matter. That’s pretty clear. A ship that’s

dedicated to Pell’s interests above all others. I have to ask myself ...

why else

would it come?

That system entry of his was designed to put the fear in us. The sudden pile-up of additional bodies on the docks, the presence of

numbers that test our facilities, and without

any

warning. They created the

crowd pressure, then called a meeting to throw around accusations of

misbehavior on the part of station. They’re entitled to speak. And

unfortunately security overreacted.”

“I have a man in infirmary, sir.”

“I am keenly aware of that. And very sorry. Security overreacted and a

reprimand has been given. But there’s a nervousness up and down the Strip

right now, not unrelated to the push these outsiders have put on us. Everybody’s worried. Everybody’s asking what this visit means. Which I

suspect is very much the desired effect. Speculation breeds fear ...

and

anger. And the most available scapegoat is station authority. It’s possible that, had

we not reacted, Neihart would have kept pushing until we

did

react. Still, it’s

unfortunate it happened. Period. People were hurt. And now, people are

worried. Security

is worried, and no good can come of trigger-happy

authority.”

“Point.” Monahan’s scowl didn’t lessen. “Captain, I

need

your assistance. Badly. And favors now

will

be

remembered. I promise you.”

Another sip, a moment to think. Niall Monahan was not a reckless man,

but not reluctant to express an opinion, either. “How

big

a favor do you need?”

“Not that big. I need someone on the inside. I’d like you to appear

interested in Neihart’s proposals, and keep

us

abreast of what’s in the works. Satisfy our mutual curiosity—while being quite sure that, henceforward,

station security will definitely step very gently in your presence. The

Company remembers extraordinary service. It

will

reward it.”

“In specific?”

“Say that depends on the quality and usefulness of the information. But say

that this office already considers

Galway

uniquely valuable, and

Galway

will

Section v

be a priority with us for a long time to come. In informing us,

Galway

will be

protecting

all

trade that comes through here. Protecting

Galway

’s own

economic future.”

“And all you want is information?”

“Yes.”

“What

kind

of information?

Specifically.”

“Information the visitors might hand other merchant ships, but not want

this office to hear. We want to know what they offer under the table, and what

they want. We want to know what they promise and what they allege about us

in places not so well monitored. Be friendly, encourage confidences, and tell

us what you know. That simple.”

Silence. A fairly lengthy one. Then: “Keep the blue-coats off us. Pick up

my man’s infirmary tab. And I get

your

personal call number, sir. I’m not

putting my people out on a tether with no quick-call to protect us.”

Abrezio hoped ...

God, he hoped ...

his relief didn’t show on his face. “No question. Absolutely. I’ll give you my direct contact, my secretary’s

direct contact, and my home contact. If you can’t reach me by the first two,

tell my wife—her name’s Callie—that it’s an emergency, and

she’ll

find me. You know the Strip. You do what you need to do, your way. For contact, yes. I’ll also give you the personal number of Bellemy Jameson, head of security. Mr. Jameson

will

be cooperative if you call

him.” If he wanted to keep his

job, Jameson would, and

damned

if he would go through Hewitt to issue the

order to station security. “I assure you of that.” He jotted multiple numbers

and names onto a notepad and handed them across the desk. “In general, you

won’t need an appointment: just walk right on through the back offices

corridor directly to this one. If it’s off-shift, the personal number will still

reach me. I’m never far from my com.”

“I’ll find what I can,” Monahan said. “Good or bad.”

Somehow, Abrezio thought, as Monahan left his office and he reached for

the phone to call Jameson—somehow he doubted there’d be anything

good

about it. Chapter 3

Mercy Infirmary #210 Green sat in a better area of the Strip, sandwiched

between a clothing shop and a fast food restaurant: a plain pressure door with

Mercy Infirmary

stenciled in large letters, and a long corridor behind it—with,

once you walked in, a

you-are-here

and an arrowed direction for

Emergencies/Outpatient Services one way, and Admissions/Visitor Services

the other, at a T intersection. Ross stopped and looked either direction. Visitor Services seemed the best bet, in a hallway made cheerful by

warnings about venereal disease and the risk of jump drug addiction, with call

numbers for various services. A single anomalous vase of aged imitation

flowers sat at the intersection, and down a stub of a hallway, there was the

further choice of Vending and Admissions. Opposite that, an information desk manned by a fresh-faced teenager

otherwise occupied by a game unit. Attentive, however. The kid looked up, focused, said, “Yes, sir?”

“Looking for Fallan Monahan.”

“Fallan Monahan,” the kid said into a mike, and got a tinny robotic answer. “B five.” The kid pointed to the obvious B at the next side hall and looked at

his display. “Room five.” And returned to his handheld video game. No information to be had there. Ross took the directions to B, walked

down a short hall provided with several hard chairs. The door of room 5 was

open, and Fallan was lying in bed, looking asleep and not too bad—except the

screens beeping and blipping around him, with sensor patches stuck on his

temple, his hand, his arm, God knew where else, and a huge machine arm

arched over him. Ross gave a gentle rap on the door frame. Fallan opened his eyes, saw him,

shifted an arm under his pillow. That movement stopped with a grimace and a

shake of a patched-up arm. “Damn sticky-patches. They call all hell down on

you if you mess with them. How’re you doing, kid?

Those idiots arrest you?”

“We’re fine. We’re all fine. Mary T, Ashlan, and me.” Ross came to the

bedside, helped Fallan adjust the pillow, moved a chair close. Fallan was paler

than he’d ever seen. Maybe it was the unforgiving lights, but Fallan looked

like hell, his grey hair spiked and tangled, his paper-thin skin, telltale of years

and years on the pushers and now on

Galway

, white and transparent, looking

too fragile for the adhesive patches stuck at every pulse-point. “How about

you, sir?”

“Doing all right.” Fallan waved a sensor-patched hand at the adjacent table,

where a bin sat with a small bottle and several packages with a blue

“charitable gift” stamp. “Collected me a few consolations. Bottle’s local

vodka, from

Nomad,

Pell tea from

Mumtaz,

and some kind of fruit sweets

from

Little Bear

...

I mean, I got a

thing

going here.”

“Looks like,” Ross said, pulled up the sole chair, unpadded and a bit tippy,

and sat down. “You?”

“Not a scratch. Completely out of the action. —Fallan, I’m

sorry. I should

have kept with you!”

“Hell if. I

should’ve sat still. Old instincts. Got excited, ran for the door

like a fool teenager and shouldna done it. Were you in the hall?

That mess

outside?”

“Not so quick as you. Gotta work on my reflexes. Stuck inside in a jam-up

of Santiagos. Just too slow on the jump. I looked around, and you were off

and so was Niall, and then the damn Santiagos came over the tables between

us and you. We thought, all of us, me, Mary, and Ashlan, we thought you

were away safe. We had no idea the blue-coats had done more than lock the

doors and take names. Barkeeper decided to keep pouring drinks, so we had

us a beer. So did the

Finity

lot, and we just all waited for things to sort out and

the doors to open. Barkeep backed us when the blue boys finally came

through and started taking names. We went on to Rosie’s. We’d heard Niall

had got a see-me from Abrezio. So

we waited where we thought everybody

would come. Then I got a message from Niall that you were in here and

he

wants to know you’re all right. Damn, Fal, I’m

sorry. ”

“Oh, it was stupid, but not you. Hell, you got yourself another beer, didn’t

you?

Not your fault I ran, not your fault the blue-coats started swinging sticks. Then somebody’s down and it was merry hell. Fools. They had no legal call

even to lock the damn doors. Way over-excited. One of the blue-boys tased a

Santiago right at the door as he was trying just to clear the way, and then

everybody was pushing and shoving and falling all over each other. I hear

there’s a Santiago down the hall, don’t know if it’s the same guy or not. Don’t

know how he is. That’s pretty well all I remember.” Fallan drew a deep

breath, and one of the machines beeped. “Damn that thing. I’m clear-headed

enough now, I think. Do I sound clear?”

“Clear as ever.”

“They say I hit my head. That I probably won’t ever remember that bit. Ever. I don’t like that. Never have lost a piece of my memory before.”

Nav, for God’s sake. It was no minor thing. “Well, ever’s a long time for you, old man. You can spare an hour and not

miss it.”

“Ha. Don’t you pull any games on me. The old man knows it was three

minutes twelve seconds he was out.”

“Trust you to track it.”

Glum expression. “I cheated. They

told

me. They didn’t want to, but they

told me. I’m still going out from time to time, just phase out and wake up. Not

liking that, Ross. Really

not liking that.”

“Y’know, it’s called

sleep,

Fallan.”

“I

do

know, an’ that’s not any kind of real sleep. They better not give me

drugs. I’m not having any stand-down. We make our run out of here and I’m

going to be at my post, dammit. Not stayin’ here, no matter what any doc

says. They say I’m in here for twenty-four hours, f’ God’s sake. Observation. They

do

know not to give me drugs. They got to know that.”

“Who’s your doctor?

You’ve got one, right?”

“Dr. Bocali. E. Bocali. Wet behind the ears. Jack came in.” Jack was

Galway

’s own number one medic. “Told me be patient with ’em. Patient. Nanos. Hell and damnation. Station medics are all right for a cut finger, but

they got no concept. No concept.”

No concept of the physiology and training that brought a navigator up out

of jump aware and

remembering

his place, his next moves when a ship

dropped into realspace. You didn’t just

take

a post on a ship, you

trained for it

lifelong and only a few, five percent if that, actually qualified at Nav or Helm. Seated as Nav 1.1 ?

Come up out of jump-haze that aware, with infallible

memory and a plan?

Station medics couldn’t comprehend just how important that three minutes

and twelve seconds was to a mind like Fallan’s, that could account for every

waking moment of his life, that knew, absolutely, the difference between

reality and not-reality. Had to. Lives depended on it. And not just the Family. These medics’ own lives could be at risk if something went wrong. Nav could

never hesitate, never question what was real. What he heard from Fallan tasted bad. The whole thing tasted bad. Idiot

station medics messing with Nav 1’s head. Wasn’t right. “You’ll be fine,” Ross said. And God, he hoped that was true. Hell. It was

Fallan who’d got him interested in nav, and if Ross had one mission on the

Strip, ever since he’d been free of the minders, it was staying close and taking

care of Fallan. The first time he didn’t ...

look what had happened. “When

are they letting you out of here?

You want me to sit with you?”

“Hell, no. Get out there. Help find out what’s goin’ on with the blue-boys

an’ bring me news.”

“I’ll do that. But I want to know when they’re letting you out. I’ll pick you

up.”

“Hey, I don’t need a minder.”

“I owe you, Fal.”

“The hell.”

“Do. I screwed up. I got my head wrapped tight in what they were saying

up there and I didn’t move fast enough.”

“What you talkin’ about?”

“I froze, Fallan. I got distracted and I friggin’ froze. Which is how those

fool Santiagos got between us. They came over the tables, they jammed up in

the doorway, and the doors shut.”

“Well, Critical Mass ain’t the boards, is it?

Two beers down and we ain’t

any of us all that smart.”

“I froze.”

“An’ I was bein’ a fool. If I’d remembered I wasn’t eighteen, I’d have sat

still like a sane person and not scampered for the door with the youngers. Stuck around for a beer and charged it to Neihart, wouldn’t I?

Not feeling my

age at the time. Dunno why I did it.” A pause. A frown, like looking into the

dark, trying to see. “Or ...

I do. I was seeing

Gaia

crew up there.”

“Finity,

Fallan,” Ross said, suddenly scared. “It was

Finity’s End

crew.”

“Gaia,”

Fallan said firmly. “They

were. They

are. There’s

a ship with

the

luck.” Deep breath, which set the monitor lines to rippling. “And drop that

look, kid. I’m tracking true. Ships change. Crews don’t. Family’s family. Luck’s luck. And when that fight broke out ...” Fallan stared off into years

and decades before the likes of Ross Monahan had ever been born. Before

Galway

herself was born. “I knew me a girl once. I saw old

Gaia

after her

convert to FTL, and I knew me a girl. It was Venture dock. And I was

Atlas

crew. There was a mixup in a bar. Gaia

and

Atlas

against old

Boreale. She

shouldn’t have looked at me. But she did. After.” Deep, deep breath. “After

was

quite

a time.”

“Nothing wrong with

your

memory, old man.”

A lopsided grin, as a little color touched Fallan’s skin, and his look

returned to the present. “Nothing wrong with that sleepover either, Ross-me-

lad. I swear to you, never a touch of better-than-you from that girl. We just hit

it off. We did. We spent a two-week layover, and we went our ways. Don’t

know if she’s still alive. Name was Lisa. Never forgot her.”

He’d never heard Fallan talk much about the old days, except in terms of

ports visited and trips made. Fallan remembered things—lost things, forgotten

things, but Fallan always said the next station was the important thing. Fallan

would talk about the days when Thule was up and going at its treacherous

star, the precautions they had had to take, and the devastation that star had

worked when it cut loose. He’d talk about Glory back just after the discovery

of FTL, when Glory had some of the gloss still on it. Now it was a sad,

forlorn place, that smelled, even—smelled of age and chronic neglect. Nobody went to Glory now without special effort. It wasn’t on the path to

anywhere anybody wanted to go. They just kept it alive—EC orders—a

resource, they said. But for what, nobody was sure, even the people who lived

there. And those people, even if they wanted to, couldn’t leave. There was

nowhere for them to go. Even if some station, Venture or beyond, would take

them in, they’d have no meaningful station credit to transfer, and there’d be

no jobs available for people trained in technologies decades behind every

other station. It was ...

scary. He’d never had thoughts like this before, like what would

happen if the stations they serviced just ...

ceased to exist. They’d carried

supply to Glory, because Glory needed it. It was ...

what they did. There was

no profit in it for them, but by ancient agreement, there was a place to sleep

when they got there, and fuel for the next leg of their route. And if Pell cut off Alpha ...

if those jump points to Sol never were

found ...

Alpha itself could become like that. Pell could write off all the First

Stars. Even Venture was eventually disposable, if Pell began to

define itself as

the origin-point for humankind. Or if Cyteen did. Everything back here,

within ten lights from Sol, could just be written off as ghosts of the past,

irrelevant, and best forgotten. Dammit. That was poison-thinking. They

would

find that jump point, and

Alpha would become the thriving station it once had been. Better than it had

been, because Sol goods would flow freely to markets hungry for the new and

different. He looked at Fallan and thought,

If it weren’t for

Finity

coming in here, if it

weren’t for these outsiders, you wouldn’t be lying in a hospital bed. The

visitors from the

Beyond,

as they called it, were all talk, and the talk, all of it,

was only stirring up trouble that would benefit no one except those that sent

them. That was all it amounted to. There was no way some amalgam of Alpha

Families was going to lay hands on

Rights,

just no way. And if by some

miracle they did, they damned sure wouldn’t defect to Pell. The EC might not

be powerful where these outsider ships came from, but it controlled Alpha,

had it locked down tight. The blue-coats numbered about one for every three

spacers, in normal times. And Sol itself wouldn’t give them up. Its orders

were continually, so Alpha said, Be ready. We’re coming. All these visitors had altered the normal balance of Alpha residents versus

spacer crews on the Strip and made the stationers nervous. The trade these

people brought had lowered the price of flour and wine, hurt

Santiago’s

bottom line, crowded the Strip, and caused, now,

two

riot calls. Damned straight they owe you an apology, Fallan Monahan. Finity

and

the

blue-coats. “Wot’cha starin’ at, boy?

I got me a wart or somethin’?”

He shook his head to clear it. “Yeah,” he said, finishing their old joke. “Right about ...” He tapped his right temple. “Here.”

Fallan chuckled, winced, and shut up. “Much pain?”

“Just shaken up. Mortal headache. And that memory gap. They

aren’t so

worried about that. They claim it’s kind of natural when you get hit on the

head.” Fallan’s look said it was not natural, that it wasn’t the first knock to the

head he’d taken, and that, between them, he was a little scared. That he’d

be

scared until that missing time came back. Nav didn’t drop stitches. If

anything, they were hyper-aware, picking up things most people didn’t,

multiple things at once, so if Nav was staring off into space, Nav was doing

multiple things regular minds didn’t lay hands on—and you didn’t ever talk to

them, not even on social occasions, if you saw them timed-out. Like now. And from the look, those thoughts included

Gaia

and a girl

named Lisa. Ancient memories surfacing. Time-jumps. He didn’t like that. Damn the fool blue-coats. Damn the Santiagos while he was at it. So a

fight broke out. You didn’t shove anybody senior, you didn’t shove a junior-

junior, and you damned well didn’t shove Fallan Monahan, even if you were

the law. Ross wanted, sincerely, to hit somebody—but that wouldn’t help the

situation. So he just clenched his hands and watched as Fallan’s eyes drifted

shut again. The monitors stayed steady. Everything seemed all right. Still, Ross sat

there a moment longer, reluctant to leave. Fallan’s eyes slitted open. “Trying to read me, are you?”

“Trying to be sure you’re all right.”

“I’m fine.”

“Fallan, if you want—”

“What I want is out of here. Which won’t happen for twenty two hours,

seventeen minutes and a parcel of seconds, station time, so I’m stuck.”

“I’ll stay.”

“No, you won’t. I don’t want anybody sitting and staring at me like some

spook.”

“Niall said ...”

“Yeah, well. Niall’s not here. Tell Niall I said no. Go. Get. Don’t be a

pain.”

“Niall said take care of you.”

“And you tell Niall I didn’t need a minder when I was a junior-junior, and I

still don’t need one. Tell me. How do you solve for the El Dorado drift?”

A chilly sort of question; navigational problem from the far-out dark. “Don’t need to because we don’t go there. Which you

do

remember, don’t

you?”

“Uppity kid. I’ll give you that one to solve, next shift we sit.”

“FTLs’ve never been there. You

couldn’t

remember it.”

“Makes no nevermind, Ross-me-lad. I know all the old places. Know their

quirks and their works, and I can

feel

a star about to flare.”

“You can’t. You watch the readouts like everybody else, you faker.”

Fallan gave an eyes-shut grin. “Niall’s never sure on that. I’ve had him on

for years. Continue the tradition.”

“Don’t talk to me about tradition, you old faker. I’m not doing your work

for you. Get well and get back to work.”

“I’m never wrong, howsomever. You should remember that.”

“You probably aren’t,” Ross said. The readouts were ticking up. “But you

better make those machines happy or there’ll be some medic in here.”

“Some damn bot, more like. Blinky eyes. Looks like a trash can. I’d like to

re-label the creature. Been thinking about that as a parting gift.”

“You’re doing better.”

“Filch me one of those medical waste labels?”

“Go on. You know I can’t.”

“Useless kid. Learn yourself some slight-of-hand. Useful, that is. Your

stayin’ here ...

that’s not useful. Go. Get.”

“Yes, sir,” Ross said, and sat. “So?”

“So you going to show me the approach on El Dorado?

Or is that a fake?”

“Not a chance til I shed this headache. Go. Now.” Fallan reached a finger

for the buzzer. “Going,” Ross said, and got up and left, staying for a backward look from

the door. “Get!”

Section i

Chapter 4

“I told him it wasn’t smart,”

was Bellamy Jameson’s word on the whole

affair, after Abrezio had explained the situation on com. “But he said the

moment they said anything about

Rights

and what it was for, they needed to

be shut down. I tried to wait, got pinged from Hewitt’s office to stop stalling. The doors ...

that was just plain stupid. I called it wrong, boss. I knew better

and I called it wrong.”

Long time since Bellamy had called him that. “At least you had the sense

to contact me before going back in.”

A wry chuckle. “I can only hope Hewitt doesn’t check my private texts. He’s not happy about how that went down.”

“Well, you can help make it right now, Bellamy. Just do as I say, and don’t

bother telling Hewitt. Don’t lie if he asks directly, and if that happens, just

send him to me and I’ll deal with it. We need the Monahans to trust us. They’re our best hope to keep this under control ...

whatever

this

is.”

“No problem. Hewitt’s all right, I guess, but between you and me, I wish

you still controlled Strip security. He just ...

doesn’t do it. He gets it, he just

doesn’t give a damn if he upsets the crews.”

They should have had this conversation a long time ago. Bellamy, once

head of all station security, had had no choice when Hewitt used his EC

orders to take over Strip security. By those orders, situations that directly

affected

Rights

and her crew were, theoretically, under Hewitt’s jurisdiction. Yet another example of dictates coming from people who had no idea what

the reality was out here, what kind of contingencies needed to go into orders

like Hewitt’s. But those orders did

not

exempt Hewitt from answering to

station management, if station management was ready to take the heat, and if

Bellamy was disgruntled ...

That was actually helpful. “Help me get through the next couple of weeks, and I’ll treat you to

dinner.”

Old, old code between them. Dinner ...

and a chance for completely off

the record discussion. “Never turned down a free meal, boss.”

Section ii

Chapter 4

A dark-haired girl was sitting in one of the hard chairs in the infirmary

corridor, spacer type, plain grey jacket. She stood up, oblong package in hand,

and Ross spotted the sleeve patch, the arrogant, featureless black patch that

was

Finity’s End. No patch but that, no patch for trade or seating. Junior crew. He stopped, stared with no good feeling. “Finity,”

he said. “Galway,”

she said. “Ross Monahan, Nav 3, first shift. What do

you

want?”

“How is he?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Concern. On the part of my ship. On the part of everybody. Honestly.”

He’d walked out mad at the whole situation, wanting someone or

something to direct that mad toward. The girl with the package and the jacket

patch didn’t look directly responsible. That didn’t help much. He scowled. “Fourth captain knows him. Knew him. Long time back. You were in the

bar earlier, weren’t you?”

“I was there.”

“Senior captain mentioned you. Didn’t expect you here.”

James Robert

mentioned him?

To

her?

He tipped his head back. “Yeah?

So what’d he say?”

“Ross Monahan. Third nav, first shift.”

“Which I just said.”

“And that you stayed after the doors shut, and had drinks with us. Seemed

sensible enough.”

Us. Meaning members of the Family. Not her. He’d have remembered. “I stayed. Not my choice. Had a drink; that was all. Meanwhile my

captain’s now on an admin call and our Nav 1 got hit on the head and

knocked out for three plus minutes.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Should be

me

in there, not him. Should’ve been me between him and

whatever got him. Instead, I got cut off and caught inside, no thanks to your

captain and his talk of who’s owed what. Any fool should’ve known that

would trigger the blue-coats.” That ...

felt a little good. A little release of the

pent up anger that had had nowhere to go. She bit her lip, said in a low tone, “I’m so sorry.”

It was a sincere tone. An earnest, pretty face and sorrowful stare that met

his without a flicker. It left him nowhere dignified to go from there. But it in

no wise moved him to let

Finity

crew into the room with Fallan asleep. “That for him?” Meaning the red-wrapped package pressed to her chest. She blinked and held it out to him. “Pell whiskey.”

Pricey

stuff. Not true Scotch, which Alpha sometimes shipped outward,

but almost as pricey this far from Pell. He’d seen it on offer, never spent for it,

not even a single drink. He took the package. Heavy. Full-sized bottle. Well,

Finity

should throw a bit of scrip around, after a mess-up like that. “You sending one to my captain?”

“Dunno. Could well. I’m sure senior captain would like to talk with him. Apologize in person. But this bottle is for your Nav 1, from fourth captain. She remembers him.”

She remembers him. She. Instincts twitched. “What’s her name?”

“Lisa Marie. We all call her Mum. She remembers him. From way back.”

Fourth captain. Damn. Captains didn’t talk to seated officers of other ships. But—somebody from a long time ago. Lisa. Was there

any

chance?

“Chance he might like to talk with her,” he said. “Might could do that. I’ll carry word.”

“Appreciate it.”

“How

is he?

Can I tell her that?”

“Knocked out for some three minutes. Concussed. Pretty weak. Nav. You

understand me.”

“Absolutely. I’m so sorry. He’s to get the best. Finity

says. We’ll cover it.”

“Why?” He was a little surprised, a little offended, not sure what else. “Fourth captain’s say?

Or Senior Captain’s conscience?”

“Either way you take it. If your captain gets any chaff about this from

admin, if station isn’t taking care of you ...

tell any of us. Senior Captain

wants to know. He doesn’t want people taking damage from our being here.”

“Bit late for that, isn’ it?”

That got him a quick look. An emphatic: “Nothing illegal, Galway. Not

now, not ever.”

“Not talking law. Talking delays and sudden influx of lux-goods driving

the prices down. —Why

are

you here?

Why are

all

these ships here?”

“That’s for the captains to talk about. But say we’re not here to hurt any

local’s trade or routes or business. That much I do know. That’s not what

we’re about.”

“Yeah. Well, it’s hurt already.”

“Enough to cover station charges, no more. And first captain’s trying to

make it right. There’ll be another meeting.”

“When?”

“After the captains talk.” She looked down to her hands, fingers interlaced. Her thumbs tapped silently. Nervous tick, maybe. “Buy you a drink, Ross

Monahan?” she asked, polite-sounding. And the eyes that came up held

nothing but kindness. A hint of hope, maybe. “I’d

like

to. No strings, no

business. Your choice.”...

Never a touch of better-than-you ...

Easy to expect otherwise, considering the ship, considering the history. He’d been, maybe, a little rude, counting it was a

Finity

captain who’d sent

the package, and counting Fallan had had a hookup with

Gaia,

once upon a

station call. Maybe with this same fourth captain, though she’d for certain not

been a captain then. And now this

Finity

girl was offering him a drink, maybe hoping for

information. And maybe she knew more than she said. If there were things to

learn from her, maybe he

should

try to find out. If there was another meeting coming, maybe

Galway

should know whether

to attend, or what was on offer. He hadn’t heard the result of admin’s talk with

Niall, and he hadn’t had any order yet telling him

not

to talk to a nice

Finity

girl who’d shown up with a 300-cred bottle of whiskey, instead of the

anything-fermentable vodka most stations produced. Hell. He might get in trouble. But he wouldn’t get Fallan in trouble. Fallan

was the offended and innocent party and there was that bottle of whiskey at

issue, which Fallan certainly wouldn’t turn down. He wouldn’t get Niall in trouble, either, considering his only orders from

Niall since the dust-up had been to check on Fallan. He couldn’t

see how a

drink with a

Finity

girl could cause trouble ...

and it

might

explain things. “Ross?”

He met her eyes, then slowly shook his head. “Sorry. Can’t.”

Her eyes clouded. “Not without a name, Finity.”

She grinned, and the whole room seemed suddenly brighter. “Jen, Ross. My name’s Jen Neihart.”

“Well ...

I guess it’s all right then.” He shook off the effect of that smile. Couldn’t let such things distract him. “There’s some kind of little bar next to

the eatery,” he said. “Next door. I don’t want to go off too far. And ...

well, I

don’t want to be seen around with you. With any

Finity

crew. Nothing

personal, but we got

enough

going on with admin right now, thanks to you.”

“Understood,” she said. He raised the wrapped bottle. “I’ll take it in to him. I’ll tell him about it, if

he’s awake.”

Section iii

Fallan wasn’t. Or he was deep in calc, which Fallan sometimes did, just to

occupy his mind. The screens were all ticking away, steady, reassuring. He added the package to the bin with the other gifts, and quietly left. Chapter 4

It was a hole-in-the-wall place that served as drink source for the eatery and

indirectly served the infirmary, as a place where people on an infirmary vigil

could catch a snack or a drink. They ordered drinks and chips to cushion the

alcohol, and faced each other across a small, scarred table, under a changing

neon that went from red to blue to purple. They sat in lengthy silence until the drinks came, and then just eyed one

another until a sip had had time to hit bottom. She had dark eyes, Jen did, and she was a little on the skinny side, but fit-

skinny, by how she moved. Not tall. The wiry sort who, as a youngster,

frequently got sucked into maintenance, because they’d fit the narrow spots. Or served as runners, in their early years. A little old, maybe, to be a

runner. But who knew?

On a

big

ship, maybe—

The sleeve didn’t give a clue. Just that one patch, saying

Finity

owned

deep space, though they were newer than

Galway. Gaia

hadn’t been new, though. That was what that patch claimed. First and

oldest of all ships. Shiver, you newcomers to space. We were

here. Yeah, well, he said to himself. We have our history, too, off old

Atlas

and

older

Argo. We were sub-lighters, too, least Fallan was, in the pre-convert

days. We just weren’t as lucky as you. Didn’t happen to be where you could

get the big help. We threw in our lot with Alpha, when everyone else left her

to starve. Still here. Got a

right

to be here. Who’re

you?

He didn’t say any of that. Just ...

“So what

can

you tell me?

Alpha’s not your route, not even near. You

come in empty. So your manifest says. Hard to make a profit that way. Plan to

undercut us on your way out, maybe, with that big hold?

Hate to tell you, Sol

stuff is long gone, til

Atlantis

gets in. Bit of a wait, that.”

He didn’t expect her to tell the truth, either, maybe not to answer at all,

because he couldn’t, right now, muster a nicer tone. The magic of that grin

had vanished, leaving him with just that patch, and what she and her ship had

brought in. All the questions. All the distrust. It was as if, sitting down in this

meeting, the situation just came down on him. She took a moment, rotating her drink on the table-top, while moisture

crawled down the side. “Answered that already, Galway. We’re here to help, not hurt.”

“So you say. Doesn’t make sense. Ships don’t run this far just to lose

money.”

“Here’s definitely a little out of the way for us,” she admitted, drawing

shapes out of the puddles on the tabletop, loops and lines. “Alpha’s been out

of the way for a long time.” And glanced up. “But maybe not forever.”

“You

know

something?”

A little shake of the head. She had a quirky sort of smile that he somehow

trusted more than that grin. “No. I don’t. But not forever, still. What I think,

not what I know. Alpha’s part, you know, part of the whole web. Merchanters

can’t make profit without ports. Last thing we want is to see any ports shut

down.”

Last thing we want ...

Did

she know something?

It was a weird topic to

start with, but it was a weird circumstance that brought four outsiders into

Alpha, too. “So?” he said. “Keep going. I’m listening.”

“I can’t say because I don’t know. I truly don’t know and if I did I couldn’t

say. I just know we’ve been meeting with various ships and crews at other

stations. But it’s captains’ talk, not crew’s. It’s all about that.”

“Meetings at other stations. What stations?”

“All the way from Mariner.”

“So what do they say, your captains, when they meet?

What do all these

ships say?”

A shrug. “Not for me to report. Likely you know more than me on this one. You heard what my captain said in there. I wasn’t at the meeting.”

“Lots of words is what I heard. Lots of stuff about

Rights of Man,

with no

fix for it. He talked about ownership. And Families. We already

own

our

ships. That’s not an issue at Alpha. Getting

finance

for our ships, getting

cargoes, getting services, that’s an issue.”

“Captains will say, when it comes down to it. I can’t speak for them.”

“Your JR said

we

could do something. Made it sound like we could

demand

Rights

for some Family. How likely is

that?

Not a chance in hell, is

what any Alpha ship knows. And what’s up with the other ships?

Who’s

we

in

the first place?”

She shrugged, meaning even if she knew, she wasn’t saying. Couldn’t, any

more than he could give away

Galway

’s secrets ...

if

Galway

had any. It was just ...

weird. If FTL with Sol were imminent, he could imagine

outsider ships maybe coming in to beat other ships, to be first in line to lock

into the routes, to mess with local trade and maybe throw some foreign goods

into the system to sweeten the interface. But if that was the case ...

wouldn’t

the locals be the first to know?

If it was all about

The Rights of Man ...

why the talk of giving it to a local

Family?

That Pell and places beyond were upset about the EC running a

merchant ship—one that carried a lot of additional personnel along with it—

seemed pretty obvious. Question was ...

what did they think they could do

about it?

Were they here to stir up trouble between the station and the locals,

and while everyone was distracted, were they going to try to do something

with

Rights

—like maybe take it by stealth and force, put a crew from

Finity

on her ...

But imagination stumbled there. Take her and do ...

what?

There was no

proof

Rights

herself could even make one run, let alone be pirated clear to

Pell. Destroy her, maybe. That would set whatever the EC planned back more

than just the materials and time. Alpha couldn’t take another twenty years of

neglect. Destroy

Rights,

refuse to trade with Alpha ...

and Pell would have a

ruined station as a buffer between them and Sol. If Pell were truly that ruthless. Maybe Pell was out to take over Alpha. If they backed

Rights

out, isolated

the blue-coats on the station ...

But that didn’t work. The four ships together

couldn’t

try to take Alpha itself. They were

way

too few for that, even if

stationers weren’t fighters. They’d

become

fighters if they had to. So that was all just crazy. Unless they used control of

Rights

as leverage. Cyteen outright hated the EC. That was a given. Pell had pitched the EC

entirely off their deck when

Finity

was starting its actual build. That was

fairly famous. It had finally let the EC come back, but rumor said it was a

very small office and had to rely on Pell’s security. Everybody knew that Sol was eventually going to have its own opinions

about Pell and Cyteen, but as things stood, Sol could talk all they wanted, and

even Alpha didn’t have to listen. Orders from Sol, orders that could kick up a

fuss with Pell, all came on the Stream, a couple of decades behind-times, and

with no manpower to back them. Did Sol figure as a problem that would bring Pell rushing in?

Not yet. But as JR Neihart had pointed out: that could change overnight—

everything could change overnight, if Sol found the necessary jump point. Could it possibly be that close?

Could Sol just—turn up, faster than the

Stream could tell them it would happen?

If they found the jump point ...

hell,

yes. And the thought of a first-time crew coming insystem at who knew what

vector ...

in a ship the size of

Rights

?

That carried a whole lot of scary. Jen was looking at him, wondering, he supposed, what he was thinking, in

the growing silence, knowing, probably, that if she asked, he’d tell her as

much as she’d told him ...

which was nothing. It was beyond awkward, and

the worst was, if it weren’t for the mystery surrounding her presence, he

thought, maybe, there’d be no awkward, only possibilities. That her silence

was loyalty to her ship and captain, nothing more. “I’ve got a question for you,” Jen said, finally, breaking that silence. He shrugged. “Go.”

“You said any fool should have known. Call me a fool, but why

did

the EC

jump on the meeting in the first place?

We weren’t doing anything illegal,

were we?”

“Not exactly.”

“Even by a stretch?”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you think they thought was going on?”

He shouldn’t have said that. She wasn’t a fool. He was getting that much. Her captain definitely wasn’t. And if the point hadn’t been to set the blue-

coats off, could the situation really be

that

different ...

out in the Farther

Stars?

Did they really think they could swagger in, start bad-mouthing the

EC ...

and

not

set the blue-coats off?

“They’re blue-coats. They’re suspicious anyway. And there’s a lot of

strangers on the Strip. It’s more people on the Strip than I’ve ever seen. So

they’re jumpy. Everyone is, case you haven’t noticed. You came in like the

devil was tailing you. You scared hell out of people. Figuring is, now, you

meant

to scare hell out of us.”

“We had a choice, come in slow, way out, and keep people in suspense for

days, or come in fast, and not. And this being a touchy star, yeah, fast, if we

were coming in close. By what you say, either way people would be upset.”

“Upset doesn’t cover it. This is

Alpha

, f’ God’s sake. A short hop from

Beta. Bogies coming out of the dark

upset

people here.”

She tipped her head. “What do you mean?”

“You could have talked!

Three hours, the boards had just the

incoming

message. No ID. No origin. Nothing. And the telemetry, when we saw it ...

God!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m sure we sent the ID. First

pulse. Always. I wasn’t on the bridge, so can’t say I saw the button pushed,

but I’m sure we did.”

“After.”

“Soon as we could. Standard procedure.”

“You saying station’s to blame?

You saying

station

kept it from us?”

“I’m saying I’m sure bridge sent the ID. Didn’t want to scare anyone. We’re not like that. Captain knows about Beta. We all do. He reminded us,

last thing before jump.”

“So you say.”

“No reason, Ross. No reason not to tell.”

Even if she was telling the truth, something about that mysterious entry

still rankled. “You and these other ships. You’re all together. Same reason.”

“Definitely.”

“They knew you were coming.”

“Definitely.”

“So why didn’t

they

say who it was?”

She blinked. “I ...

don’t know.” She stared into her drink a moment, then

pressed her lips against ...

dammit ...

it was that quirky smile. “What?”

“Well ...

it’s Min. Xiao Min. Little Bear

’s senior captain. It wasn’t

our

Senior Captain’s orders, that silence, I can tell you that much. But Xiao

Min....

he likes

moments

...

if you know what I mean. He ...

reads people,

situations, by how they react to

moments. ”

And

Finity’s

arrival had definitely been that. And if she was right, if

Finity

had sent that ID on schedule and it was Abrezio who kept it quiet ...

well,

this

Min

might read something into that, for sure. Ross was trying real hard

not to read too much into it himself. “You’re here. Together. You and these ships. Why?”

“To talk to Alpha merchanters. We want it clear it’s not just

Finity

on her

own. We rep a lot of others, that’s what, and they’re here so it’s not just our

word on it.”

“But you won’t say who you rep, and what you’re here to talk

about. ”

“I can’t say when my captain hasn’t, not even if you were Nav 1.

And I

won’t. Captains need to hear from captains first. Sorry for that. But I can’t. Your captain will get a call. Likely would have already, if the EC hadn’t

interfered.”

That was definite. And he couldn’t work past it. He had to respect her

loyalty. Situation reversed, he’d do the same. “So my captain’s gotten called in by admin. Nav chief’s in infirmary with a

head injury. We’re loaded up to go, but we can’t go because Alpha’s not

clearing any ship to go, which means our schedule’s

screwed

and we’re losing

income

and

reputation. It’s kind of a hard day, Jen Neihart. All thanks to your

ship.”

“We are so sorry. All I can say. None of us did the shoving. None of us

closed those doors. And that’s the truth, too. There was no call for that. There

was none of us called for anything that threatened harm.”

“Except saying we should take that ship.”

“Didn’t say you should

take

it. Said the station should

give

it to somebody

who can handle it.”

“I was there,” he pointed out defensively, but thinking back, he realized

she was right. “And

I

know the Senior Captain wouldn’t say go take it. That’d be against

the law.” Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly and she leaned forward, crossed

arms on the table. “Listen, Galway. Something maybe you haven’t thought

about. You thought our entry was scary-fast. You say station had three hours

of wondering what was coming at them and that made tempers hot. You think

about what every other station is thinking and wondering right now, knowing

that ship out on A-mast exists,

wondering if that ship out on A-mast actually

has the same engines as brought

Finity

in, wondering when that ship might

actually make a jump and come into

their

system with a bunch of novices at

the boards trying to remember which way’s up, and maybe not finding it

before they blow the station to smithereens. Dunno if that was on my

captain’s mind, or Min’s, but it’s something to think about.”

Echo of his own worries, and with fewer unknowns. Those stations further

on

knew

that

Rights

existed, had seen

Finity

in action. For nearly twenty years

they’d known

Rights

was coming ...

and then they’d have gotten news of

that first trial run and its sudden shut-down, aborting the jump. Bryant’s

Station, as their destination, had to be wondering ...

what if that first run

hadn’t

aborted?

He’d be wondering, too. He’d be worried, if he was stuck on one of those

stations, sitting target for a badly aimed bow wave. “I don’t know, Ross,” she said, face earnest as hell. “I’m not the captain. Not certain why he chose to come in close. I do know we could have come in

far and spent days and days meandering in while rumors flew, or we could

come in the way we did, and by the way,

maybe

put the fear of God into some

people who had better know what they’re putting into the hands of novices. You’re Nav. You know it. If stationers trained on sims ever take that ship out

and don’t plot a careful entry, they’re going to kill themselves, and probably a

whole lot of others. If Alpha’s

really

unlucky, they’re going to survive the trip

out and then cash it all in on the way

back.”

Was that the real reason they’d come?

A dramatic wakeup call to the

station?

Could it really be no more ...

and no less ...

than that?

For years the

grim humor on the Strip had centered around the ways in which that sim-

trained crew could foul up. That humor had turned black and lost the laughter,

thanks to

Finity’s

entry. That much couldn’t be denied. She’d relaxed, her point made, and sat, head propped on one hand, the

other tracing patterns on the table. “Alpha is the world of not-going-to-happen,” Ross said, to himself as well

as her. “Things hang forever. This is a pusher-world: nothing happens fast. An

EC world: everything operates on

rules. The blue-coats ...

they got scared. They didn’t have a rule. That’s what happened. Somebody tried to make a fast

decision about that meeting and nobody had a rule. So it went every which

way.” And with a sense of betrayal in the realization, recalling his own

thoughts—that Alpha was the best the First Stars had to offer—and realizing

how little that meant, in the world she came from: “There’s only one place

more backward than here and that’s Glory,

which is down to a few hundred

people keeping the lights on. You ever been there?”

“Never, well, not since we were

Gaia. Then, yes. Me personally, no. Never. You?”

“Regular. Part of our run. Where’s yours go?

Pell?”

“Pell, Viking, Mariner, yeah, definitely. Pell’s our home station.”

Exotic places. Places at the edge of the rest of the universe. The Beyond. Rich places. “Different than here, I’ll imagine.”

She didn’t answer right away, just looked at him. Something in his voice he

maybe wished wasn’t. Then: “Every station’s different.”

“What are they like, those places?”

“Viking’s plain, all utilitarian. Lot of bare metal. Noisy. Clangs and thuds

and echoes. Mariner’s bright. Lot of color, little shops. Lot of Cyteen stuff

coming in there. Pell’s got a lot of color, too. Vid displays everywhere you

look. And you got Downers moving about: I’ve seen a couple.”

Downers. the indigenous intelligent species of the planet Pell circled. God. “I’ve just seen pics,” he admitted, trying to sound casual

“Well, it was off at a distance. Not much more than dots, but they were

little. Like youngers. But then Pell’s docks—they’re huge. Makes everybody

look tiny.”

Ring-docking. Again. He’d seen pictures, sure. But the sparkle in her eyes,

the tone of her voice when she said it—was the awe of someone who’d just

impressed hell out of the world

he

knew. Someone who resonated to those

faraway things in a way that told him there were wonders out there

she

knew,

and he had never seen. I knew me a girl once,

Fallan had said, in that same tone. I knew me a girl

once. I saw old

Gaia

after her convert, and I knew me a girl ...

As the pushers faded, and

Gaia

changed, and everything changed. And

Lisa still remembered him, and he remembered her. She shouldn’t have looked at me. But she did. The way, he thought, maybe, he was looking at this girl, off

Finity’s End. And she didn’t turn away. Their hands rested naturally close to each other on the little table-top. He

moved his, stopped, because

shouldn’t have

was the truth. But dark eyes

gazed back, eyes that had seen all those sights, and he stared back, thinking,

If

—

Her fingers touched his. He felt it. He moved his hand forward, fingers to

fingers. And stopped, thinking:

We’re not their match. More than the difference in

the ships, what she’d seen, who she’d been with ...

they were biologically

close to the same age, but in experience ...

“I know you’re sitting with your friend,” she said, “and hanging close here. But if you’d like company in the watch, I’d be happy to stay. I’ve got

nowhere I really have to be.”

Fingers touching fingers. Fingers curled in fingers, and doubts faded. “The on-call hospice is two doors over. I’m going to check in there for the

night. My com’s tagged to Fallan’s room. I don’t expect a call. They’re just

observing, and he doesn’t want me hanging about. But the on-call’s where I’ll

be. Company for supper, maybe, if you don’t mind this place, which is what

we’ve got.” He gathered nerve to say, “Sleepover, if you like.”

“I don’t know,” she said, and it was a reasonable caution on both sides. Their ships didn’t know each other. He could be a problem. She could. But Fallan and a

Gaia

girl had known each other, in the day. “Let’s just go where it takes us,” he said. “Supper. I’m buying.”

“Fine with me.” She added, not an objection, “Shares.”

She paid for the drinks. They were hand in hand when they left. And it was more than supper, after. Wasn’t her first time, wasn’t his. And between strangers, in a first

sleepover and under the circumstances, manners were in order, definitely. Peacemaking, of a sort. She’d have no bad report of

Galway

when she met

up with her cousins; and he couldn’t say his impression of arrogance in

Finity

held out in Jen Neihart. She was just, well, sweet, somebody he didn’t know

if he’d meet ever again after their respective ships left Alpha, and he damned

sure didn’t want her ship trafficking in

Galway

’s territory—but damn,

she

was

nice, no politicking, no fuss, no complaining, no tale-bearing about some

other crew. Just happy. Just—

Damn, he wished she

were

a Galli or a Rodriguez. He’d be glad to go on

seeing her from time to time. Real glad. He’d checked in with

Galway

’s autocall. She’d done the same with

Finity’s. Their ships

had

to know where they were, not necessarily that they

were together. He’d also checked in with the infirmary, but the report was

“doing fine”; and no call came. Until morning, when the call sounded loud and clear, and he waked to

remember he was in bed with someone. She waked and sat up, sheet fallen to

her waist. “That’s the infirmary,” she said, a fact clear enough on the wall-screen. “God, it’s 0900.”

He reached to the nightstand and punched the button. “This is Ross

Monahan. Infirmary?”

An actual human voice said,

“Mr. Monahan, your party is ready to check

out.”

That

was good news. It was real good news. “I’ll be right there,” he said. “Don’t let him leave. I’m coming.”

“Do I get to meet him?” Jen asked. “Dress,” he said, and looked for his clothes, which were not neatly

bestowed in the only chair, but mixed with hers, on the floor. He didn’t order

room lights, just started gathering up his—morning shyness, it was, light only

from the bathroom. She hugged the sheet to her and asked, “Can you pass my

shirt?”

“Sure.” He did that, snagged his own, sitting on the edge of the bed. He

tossed clothes over, and they dressed, quickly, took advantage of the

complimentary toiletries, put on boots and jackets, his with the triple knot of

Galway

on the sleeve, hers with the dark of deep space. And faced each other. “Do again?” she asked. “I would.”

“Sure,” he said. “Tonight?”

“If Fallan doesn’t need me.” He opened the door, handprinting the lock,

which sent the tab to

Galway

’s account. “Let’s help him carry the swag home,

get him set up in the sleepover. Maybe we can set up a meeting, him with

your Fourth. He might like that.”

“Matchmakers,” Jen said. Her slight smile made a set of mischievous

dimples. “I love it. Let’s.”

Section iv

Chapter 4

“I’m fine,” was Fallan’s word. He had a gel-patch on his forehead, the

dissolving sort, the card said. He was

not

supposed to take long walks,

exercise, or carry heavy loads for a few days. He was

not

cleared for duty as

yet, and he was damned mad about it. But: “Who’s this?” Fallan asked when Jen came through the door, and he

pushed himself up out of the chair. “Don’t tell me I’d forget

this

girl.”

“You’ve never met her,” Ross said. “Jen Neihart, Fallan Monahan. Fallan,

somebody on

Finity

says they know you. Old

Gaia

crew. Name of Lisa.”

Fallan sank back down into the chair. “Don’t kid me, boy. You’re saying

Lisa?

Lisa Marie?”

“Fourth captain on

Finity’s End,”

Jen said from the doorway. “Lisa Marie.”

“Good lovin’ God.”

“Your Lisa Marie is evidently who sent you a real expensive bottle of

whiskey,” Ross said, while Jen stood in the doorway. “She evidently

remembers you, too, she’s real sorry you got knocked down, and I’ll suspect

she’s apt to have dinner with you when you can walk without wobbling. Doc

says no sex for five days, however.”

“Hell,” Fallan said, pushing himself up again, not quite as easily as he

might have. “I’m feelin’ better already. God. Alive and well, and Fourth on

Finity’s End

, no less.”

“Used to be Senior on

Gaia,”

Jen said. “Fourth on

Finity,

yes, sir,

absolutely. We call her Mum. Most times we call her Mum.”

“Feeling a

lot

better,” Fallan said, and grabbed his jacket off the bed. “Dinner, you say. I’ll buy. You tell her so.”

“Later,” Ross said firmly. “Day, maybe two. Right now, you’re going right

back to the sleepover. And no fuss, Fallan Monahan. You’re going to do what

you’re told at least for tonight. Niall’s going to be all over me if his nav chief

dies of pure stupidity. Just take it easy. I’m sure Jen here will relay a message

to your friend.”

“No respect. No respect,” Fallan said, beginning to fuss his way into his

jacket. “Your generation, no respect.”

Then he stood still, frowning. “Damn. Niall. Abrezio. How’d that

summons come out?”

“No idea,” Ross said. “Sorry to say—I was on-call for some old guy in

sickbay. And

busy.”

“That what you call it?”

“Come on. Jen, you carry his loot. I’ll see he doesn’t take a dive.”

“Walking just fine, thank you.” Fallan held up his hand, with the blue

medical stamp on it. “Got my official release from this damn lockup. Stop for

breakfast?

Stuff here is crap.”

Section i

Chapter 5

Breakfasts and suppers were how the Family got together, operationally

speaking and socially speaking. It was the hour between maindawn and

maindark, when all four shifts met, shared meals, talked, and caught up on

goings-on during the off hours. The Zenith restaurant served the Olympian Hotel sleepover, and it truly

wasn’t bad, in JR’s estimation. Not so fancy as some, and the offerings on the

menu were limited, but they did well with what they had, and the menu had

some things

Finity’s

galley didn’t. The fruit juice was heavily processed, but

the local Earth-seed non-processed greens were very good. The pancakes

were downright special, and made their way onto plates with steak and salad

—first and fourth shifts were having breakfast and second and third were

having supper, that being their o’ clock, and, the Zenith being an obliging

restaurant, there was no snobbery, no division of menus, no “this is the

breakfast chef, this is the supper.” Just mix and match as you liked. “Better than Bryant’s, by a far distance,” was Fletcher’s judgement, with a

lot of agreement. “No plastic eggs,” Madison said. “How do they make those things?

That’s

what I want to know.”

“You don’t ask,” Fletcher said, “if you don’t want the answer.”

“Seen a food lab once,” Boz said, down the table. “Put me off my food for

days.”

“Don’t tell me,” Madison said. “It’s—” Boz began, and voices from all the tables in range shut him down. “Boz never missed a meal in his life,” Kate said, and Mum:

“The pancakes are

lovely,

aren’t they?”

Com unit gave a distinct quiver in JR’s pocket. He put down his fork and

took a look. W

, it said. 42.

And:

80 of 100.

The first letter identified the source: Walt,

aboard

Finity

, at dock. The second message meant,

Pretty well what we expected. And the last

was,

Customs attempting access. “Well,” JR said. “Customs inspectors have shown up at the lock. I may

need to cut breakfast short.”

“Oh, finish your tea,” Madison said. “They’ll be arguing back and forth for

an hour at least.”

“Probably I should call Abrezio’s office.”

They weren’t

supposed

to have crew left aboard. Alpha rules did advise

that station customs

might

pull a random inspection. Given that Alpha had its

own version of

Finity

at dock on A-mast, it was a fair guess certain people

were dying to have a look inside the original, and

random

had nothing to do

with it. The on-board crew was using their own communications to reach them at

the moment, a convenience that could be shut down once station figured out

there was someone aboard. Station might notice that little blip of contact—if

they were monitoring just about everything going on with

Finity

, which was

highly likely. Alpha wasn’t supposed to be bugging the sleepovers, either, but they’d

found and disabled a few fairly old-fashioned units. They’d warned the

minders not to let the children mention certain topics, and the minders

understood the seriousness of it all. They’d also doubled up on minders to

keep the junior-juniors in line, a much harder proposition: they were keeping

the kids confined, which they didn’t like, but so busy with games and new

distractions their heads must spin, and

Little Bear, Mumtaz,

and

Nomad

were

doing much the same. It wasn’t saying somebody might not slip, in one of

four ship crews, but not spreading information to all ages and levels in the

first place was the best security. “Bet’s on,” Fletcher said, “that station admin calls before mainday lunch.”

“Well,” JR said, and topped off his cup, “I may start my watch with station

offices. Or not. I think I’ll give them just a while to figure it out.”

Fletcher said: “You’re not going anywhere solo, Senior Captain, sir.”

“We’ll see how it goes,” JR said, “but then I’ve been surprised before. Same for all of you—nobody goes anywhere alone.” Sip of tea. “Abrezio’s

coming on watch. Give him at least time to have his morning tea. And we

have a meeting I don’t want to postpone.”

That reaction last night had been ...

unexpected. They’d known the EC

was strong here, stronger even than it had been on Bryant’s, possibly

as

strong, if the blue-coat numbers were any indication, as it was reported to be

on Glory, which was really nothing but an EC outpost now, maintained only

at direct EC orders. Venture maintained an uneasy supremacy of its station

administration over the EC offices, while Pell had outright put its EC office

on notice that another incident, no matter how minor, would see the EC not

only kicked off Pell, but very likely off Venture as well. Getting rid of them here ...

would be a much harder effort. Section ii

But that wasn’t their concern. Stations would do as they pleased. As long as that pleasure didn’t include invading a Family ship. Chapter 5

The message had gone out. Finity’s End

was standing off the customs people. But that was not what brought in, at a casual stroll, Xiao Min of

Little Bear,

who, passed at the door of the Zenith, settled at the same back table as

Finity

personnel, and ordered tea on his own tab. Asha Druv of

Nomad

followed, a woman of middle years, who wore fairly

conspicuous flash—a purple jacket that sparkled, Mariner-style. Min, by

contrast, was all black satin. Then there was Sanjay Patel, who had a taste for gaudy electronics; and the

Mumtaz

crew jackets were embroidered in floral magnificence. Not the least conspicuous company ever to assemble. And Sanjay brought with him a stout, grey-haired woman in silver studs

and black denim, red ship patch with a white fleur-de-lys: Giovanna Galli, she

was. Of

Firenze. Madison and Boz cleared chairs for Sanjay and the

Firenze

captain. JR rose from the table. So did other Finitys, a courtesy to a

newcomer, who bobbed a responding courtesy. “Finity,” Galli said. “You’re JR.”

“I am, ma’am. You’re Giovanna.”

“Yes, sir, that I am. My ship’s been screwed up, down, and sideways by

Alpha admin, and I’m taking a raw edge of a chance coming here. I had to get

five of mine out of detention yesterday. But I don’t see the situation for us can

get much worse.”

“If all goes as we hope, it will get much better. —Please, have a seat.”

“Yeah, well. We’ll see.” But she did sit, accepted the tea someone passed

her, as everybody sat back down. “You can talk here in relative safety,” JR said. “The local coverage has

been ...

temporarily disrupted ...

and I’m fairly certain the blue-coats will

be busy elsewhere.”

“The 42,” Min said from down the table, meaning the coded alert from

Walt aboard

Finity. Warning about the attempted boarding. “Yes,” JR said. “It’s not critical yet. Won’t be unless they bring a cutter. Give the waiter a moment.” A young man was bringing a rolling tray with

refills, and he stayed to clear breakfast dishes. “Second and fourth shift can go

off if they want.”

“Hell, no,” Mum said, clearly set to stay. She snatched her cup out of the

waiter’s reach and held up the empty tea caddy. “Fill, please.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the answer was, and the waiter took it, replacing it with a

full one from an adjacent empty table. Mugs followed. The tea caddy went the

round, a new full water-pot chased after it, and, for Giovanna and Madison,

the sweetener. The waiter left. “Customs just made a try,” JR said. “We got the signal via the bundle, no

problem. We’re just waiting for the complaint.”

“No movement against our ships,” Min said. “Us either,” Asha said. “But they’re dying to get a look inside

Finity.”

“Well and good, but they may try you next,” JR said. “Just to see if they

can, if nothing else.”

“We are ready,” Min said. “We anticipate it.”

“You locked out customs?” Giovanna asked. “We have our protocols. Their form had a polite yes/no about access. I

checked no. I believe we all did.”

Nods up and down the table. “So we did tell them,” JR said quietly, “and one hopes they’ll enter quiet

discussion about it.”

“Ha,” Min said. JR shrugged, and addressed himself to Giovanna. “We don’t allow

inspections at any other station, either. Customs is welcome—if they observe

restricted areas, only goods destined for offload. No wandering at will, and

they go accompanied by a crew member who’s empowered to say no.”

“I hate to say,” Giovanna said, “but access is not exactly an issue for us,

since some very large ship moved in and bumped us off the mast.”

“We do apologize for that. We hope to make it up to you.”

A bitter laugh. “We have to get a special pass and hire a runabout to get

aboard our own ship right now, and scheduled work’s stopped. Last try was a

bust, and nobody knows what the schedule will be. Listen, this isn’t Pell. It’s

not even Bryant’s. Things wait. If you’re not in their face complaining, you

get nowhere, and now that we’re out there under bot control, we’ll wait. We

got a free push out. Bastards will probably charge us for pushing us in when

you leave. You take up a lot of room, Finity. In all senses.”

“We’re aware of that.”

“And you being what you are, the law doesn’t apply, does it?”

“Customs has no need to wander through your ship. What comes off your

ship, yes, but not what’s staying on it.”

“Like I said—you being what you are, Captain. And ring-docking’s not

happening here. Hell, we can’t even repair what we’ve got. We got that black

hole on A-mast. Until that ship goes jump, and probably after, good luck to

us: Glory’s the bag end of the universe, and we’re the next stop up from

them.”

“Stations have obligations to us,” JR said, “Conditions they have to

maintain. Among other things.”

“Good luck with that here.” Giovanna drained her tea. “If that’s all you

wanted—”

“It’s not. One understands you’ve had an ongoing nav problem.”

“

One

would be correct,” Giovanna said, scowling. “One would be damned

correct. For the last five years, our ship has been in Alpha’s hands more than

ours. Perpetual repair job, which they keep patching. And we’re delayed

again.”

“You need,” JR said, “a repair they haven’t been willing to give you.”

“Repair, hell, I need a whole damn system. First engee’s told them time

and again, and instead of listening to him, they just keep patching it. And

patching it. And patching it.”

“If it’s ghosty on entry, it’s probably physical in origin, probably

happening on a quantum level and likely involving the sensors,” Boz said

from down the table. “Programming’s not the fix. Your engineer’s right.”

“So he’s right. But we got no choice. Yeah, sure, we need a new system. It’s damned scary making jump when the damn unit may or may not drop you

out where it’s supposed to. Last breakdown, it took us eight months—eight

friggin’

months

to limp back in. Who wanted to trade with us, then?

Who’ll

trust us for the next run, when we know damn well we can’t guarantee

anything

like

a delivery date?

We

have

to set it wide and hope it doesn’t get

generous and drop us into the star.”

“Terrifying,” JR said, and meant it. “Tell me so. I got a hundred forty-seven crew and two kids, who put their

lives in my hands every time we leave port. I don’t get a helluva lot of sleep

on that thought. I don’t want to take those mamas and kids out again.” She

shoved her chair back. “Excuse me.”

Next to her, Madison put a hand on her arm. “We do have an answer,

Captain.”

“

Answer

?

What friggin’ answer?”

“A fix,” JR said. “I’m not leading you on. Listen to me. Alpha hasn’t the

capability of fixing

Firenze. That’s why I wanted to talk to you ahead of all

others—and ahead of Abrezio. Hold here for a fix. Stay

at Alpha until the ship

is safe.” Giovanna started to protest the obvious and JR lifted a hand. “You

can’t go out again the way you are.”

“So what

can

we do?

What can anybody do?” The stress showed, long-

held and desperate. “Where’s a fix?

Where’s a new system going to come

from?”

“We’ll get it.”

“Like it magically appears.”

“

We

can get it. Yes.”

Her eyes narrowed. “We. We ...

who?”

“Merchanters. There are sixty-three Families, of which you’re one, and

four more sit at this table. Station provides for its two pusher-ships. Free

board, free room, free stay, free fuel, and free service. But we’re FTL. We

haul for ourselves. We make profit. And we take losses.”

“Tell me about it,” Giovanna said between her teeth. “Any of us can have a run of bad luck. Alpha itself has had no favors, in

that ship build up on A-mast. But cargo has to move, and stations can’t wait a

decade on a pusher arrival. The old

Gaia

Agreement applies to the pushers,

not to us. But it

can

be adapted to us. There are sixty-three Families, and

we’re obviously faster. We meet needs, and it takes all of us, of whatever size,

to keep modern stations going. Healthy stations mean healthy trade and

healthy industry, which means prosperity for all of us, merchanters and

stationers alike.”

“Yeah. So. We’re little ships. We’re an

old

ship, broke down at a station

that can’t help us. One of your precious sixty-three Families is going to end

up doing bit-work and scrub on Alpha if Alpha can’t get us running. And if

we break down again,

maybe

we can limp into Bryant’s, who can’t fix us,

either.”

“Venture could. There is a way the sixty-three can get you running. Will

you hear me out?”

She shrugged, mostly looking at the table. “As long as you’re paying for

the tea. I can’t afford this place.”

“It’s our tab, Captain. Please. Just hear me out.”

Giovanna still wasn’t looking at him, hadn’t for the last while. She took a

clean cup, dropped in a tea packet, poured hot water from the pitcher, and

added a packet of sweetener. “I’m listening,” she said, still not looking at them. “Surprise me.”

“It’s like this. A few pushers are still working. But in the spirit of the old

agreement, stations have built us ships—at their own expense—and with very

few strings attached.”

“Yeah, well, and first you have to get approved, and the waiting list at

Venture is five decades long, station time. We age fast, ashore.”

“A fix is shorter.”

“But they don’t hand

that

out for free.”

“Hear me out. The old compact still does have a moral force. In your case,

Alpha’s failed you. They’re pouring everything into this Company ship that

sits useless at dock, while you build up station charges and risk your lives

every time you leave dock, bringing them goods and keeping them alive. Yours isn’t the only ship in difficulty, but yours is the most egregious case

we’ve run into.”

“Yeah, well. Small consolation.”

“Our interest is in

not

losing one of the sixty-three. And if stations can’t do

it—if a ship is needed for a Family to expand, or an existing ship needs

repair ...

we’re

the bank. We can make a loan—and you’re running again.”

“There’s got to be a stinger.”

“Payback, as you can.”

“We are so deep in debt as is. Station can’t carry us.”

“And won’t defy the EC to deal with Venture for the parts you need. The

group I’m with doesn’t intend to have the system go down to sixty-two

Families. So some of us have gotten together with the intent of taking care of

our own.”

She frowned into her tea. He gave her time to parse that. Finally:

“Bloody hell. How?

And what’s in it for you?”

“How?

Sixty-three Families helping each other. A mutual fund into which

everyone pays ...

when they’re able. What’s in it for us?

We help you now. We pay for the repairs

and

for the station charges, get

Firenze

running. Once

your ship’s healthy, and you’re running in the black,

then

you pay in.”

A short look up. And at the teacup again. “That’s too good to be true. What’s the hook?”

“Sixty-three of us paying in, sixty-three of us negotiating prices, and

leaning, however gently, on a capable station to perform in a timely manner

regarding one of our members. That keeps everyone’s equipment in top shape,

modernized as needed, and stations learn they

have

to prioritize

our

needs, no

matter what idiot orders come out of Sol—or Pell, or even Cyteen. Just the

cost of doing business. It means no more bottom of the priorities. No more

eight months out in the range, limping in and lucky to have made it

that

close. We can help you. Not charity. Mutual support. Interest-free. We’re not making

a profit off each other’s bad luck.”

“You’re serious.”

“Dead serious.”

Giovanna took a sip of tea and her hands shook. “Is that what you come

here selling?”

“That’s

exactly

what we’re here to sell.”

“Even interest-free, we couldn’t pay it back. You’ve seen Bryant’s. You’ve

seen here. The trade’s too small.”

“More ways than credit to pay back. Helping you, frankly, who are in

deep

as you can get, makes a statement, not just to the ships who haven’t yet signed

on, but to the stations as well. There will be standards of maintenance. You

can call on other ships if you’re in trouble, and if a station messes with one of

us, things will not go smoothly. Let me add the other things we’re asking. Sovereignty. No inspections. What comes

off

the ship is all customs gets to

see. What’s on the ships, or who’s on the ships, is that ship’s business. No law

on our decks but the law we make. A ship’s reputation is our consideration. A

ship’s viability is our consideration. In the long run, if all goes as planned, the

First Stars will become far better off than they’ve been in generations. And if

a Sol trade develops, and you need longhaulers here—those ships should be

yours. Not the EC’s.”

“Not for me. I saw you lot come in.” The voice was shaky, between

laughter and emotion. “But—bucking the EC—”

“The EC bucking

all

the merchanters, everywhere, wouldn’t be the best

idea they ever had.”

“You made the point yourself. There’s some thought they’re building their

own ships at Sol. That they’ll come in and we’ll be—” A shrug. “–done.”

“If our agreement stands, no hired crew will be welcome beyond Venture,

especially if half their cargo is blue-coats and their crew is sim-trained

stationers. Pell’s not fond of the EC. They haven’t got a good name at

Mariner, Viking, or points beyond. Cyteen certainly won’t deal with them. And it’s worth noting, even Cyteen, with all its other notions of

upending

nature, and with all its resources, works with Family ships as a matter of

policy. They don’t compete with us. They have a deal with Pell: trade works,

they get what they need, when they need it. They’re happy. We’re happy. We’re pleased to oblige, but we’re not obliged to please. We do

not

run scared

of them.”

“How do you arrive at that?

Power, we haven’t got.”

“Bottom line, we serve all stations without criticizing their politics, so long

as their politics keep hands off our ships. The EC’s a weak threat outside the

Alpha-Glory-Bryant’s triangle. Here, thanks to all those blue-coats, maybe the

EC rules prevail, but at Venture and beyond ...

they’re pretty well ignored. Sure, some FTL could show up from Sol, any day, any hour. We take that as a

given. But before that happens, before the EC shows up and tries to give

orders, we want a fundamental principle established, in writing, with all the

sixty-three Families—we want our system working, and our sovereignty

established. That’s what we’re here to get—a signature from every Family

here. Simply put, any station that won’t deal fairly with one of us will be

cutting itself off from the rest of us, and good luck moving cargo or

information without us.”

Giovanna’s eyes darted from one to the other of them. “The EC is

not

going to like it.”

“All they have to do is conduct business as usual, and we assure supply

gets to them. We’ll be talking about rates and fairness. But it’s in nobody’s

interest to harm a station—or to lose a ship. We need the ports. Stations need

the ships.”

“It’s a risk.”

“How many times are you willing to order your helm to push that button,

knowing previous fixes on that unit have failed?

That’s

a risk, Captain. We’d

like to say we helped, we’d like to cite

Firenze

as one of ours, and prove the

point—that we aren’t First Star ships or Farther Star ships. We’re merchanters

and we’re taking care of each other, and together we can handle a big bill. Once you’re up and running, you’ll pay in when you can. And go on paying

in. In the long run, we’ll have funds to keep any given ship in repair—we

keep the station shipyards in good operation, and we keep cargo moving

where it needs to go.”

“And you’ve got signatures. How many here?”

“If you agree, you’re the first at Alpha. Of the sixty-three Families, we

have twenty-four signatory and a handful still considering, this side of Pell,

twenty-two beyond. And we have the Quens’

Estelle

over at Viking and

Mariner, doing exactly what we’re doing here in the First Stars,

gathering

signatures, with

Dublin

and

Fame

working over in the far Beyond. We have

the finance, with the ships who’ve already signed, to help you. We

can

do it. We

will

do it, if you say the word.”

A long silence. Giovanna’s face was white. “Say I agree ...

What happens

then?”

“To start with, a consult on your ship’s problem. I’d be happy to send over

several of my techs and engineers—I think other ships might, as well, to put

hands on the system on

Firenze

and estimate what’s needed. We’ll talk

Venture into expediting a system. The system will need to be ported in, then

installed, which means a long stand-down, and your nav team will need to be

familiar with a new board before you move again.”

“We can’t survive the stand-down. We are

flat,

sir. We are beyond flat, we

are deep in.”

“Part of the loan, if you’re willing. You’ll repay at zero interest any layover

charges above the basics we negotiate for you with station, plus your dues,

proportional to ship size and class, over whatever time it takes.”

A long, dubious stare. “Dues. Who’s the banker?”

Smart woman. Key question. “None of us and all of us. The dues are setasides in each ship’s reckoning,

ten percent of profit, ship’s honor to keep that sum ready to be used on

projects voted on by four or more Families in the area—so we can make fast,

necessary moves. Four signatory Families are here, at this table. You have to

join our number, agree to pay in your ten percent once you’re running, and

we’ll negotiate with station to provide you a reasonable living until your ship

is operable. What your job costs, plus living expenses, is an interest-free loan

repayable in addition to the dues, at additional five percent of profits. There

will be

no

claim or lien against your ship. It’s on the honor system. We’ll

negotiate the resumption of your routes or see that

Firenze

finds another berth

—we have every interest in having you paying in right along with us, and

we’ll be watching over the case to be sure things happen as they should. What

it costs is never more than fifteen percent, and if we can build the fund up, we

may be able to lower that a bit.”

Giovanna was a tough woman. She lifted a knuckle to take away just a

little moisture from one eyelid. The jaw was set. Hard. “I’ll take it. Dio mio,

I’ll take it, damn sure. Abrezio may lock us out for

agreeing to this, but if we can move, it’s his loss. You want access out there,

well, she’s open, if you can get to her. How much can I tell my crew?”

“Keep it strictly to yourself for, oh, until maindark. I want Abrezio to hear

it from me first. I’m going to talk to him after we’re done here, on excuse of

the knock they just gave on

Finity’s

locked hatch. I’ll talk about that and get

around to the other thing—one leads logically to the next. But after maindark,

share it with your people, and then whoever you wish. I intend to tell Mr. Abrezio everything in a fairly friendly way. If we can get enough local ships

signatory to what we’re doing, we’re going to negotiate with Alpha about

rates and standards. The station has its own problems, and I’m not sure the

EC is

their

best solution, either. But that’s Abrezio’s call. If he decides to

challenge the EC, one solution that would serve both merchanters and station

is to turn

Rights of Man

over to a combination of Families, including yours,

and operate her as a merchanter, which would give Alpha and its merchanters

range enough to go most anywhere, but, as someone said—do you really

want

to take on a ship built by the people that can’t fix yours?”

Giovanna gave a derisive snort. “Still,” JR said, “that’s something the station has to decide for itself, with

its own alliances. Our

business is protecting merchanter interests.”

Giovanna’s lips went to a thin line, then she laughed and laughed, and went

red in the face. “God, oh, God, Finity, yes, you got us. I got to call Family

council, but you, Captain Neihart, you got

five

ships with you at the moment.”

She offered a broad, strong hand across the table, a handshake jarring the

teacups. “And if you need us, we got a hundred forty-seven of us on the Strip

—with friends up and down. We’re at the Fairwinds Hotel. Bar’s crap, but

you’re welcome.”

“Same to Firenzes at the Olympian. Saturn, Critical Mass and Outbound

are the bars.” JR stood up and shook Giovanna’s hand. Min and Sanjay and

Asha added welcome-ins to their own assigned facilities. Likely by tomorrow maindark there’d be some romances and sleepovers,

doors opened, drinks poured, probably way too many of them. Captains had

their ship’s dignity to uphold, but it was a very emotional, very tightly lidded

excitement behind that reserve. The relief of a woman who no longer had to

risk a hundred forty-nine lives on a nav system that—he could guess—was

suffering from a sensor problem, a processing problem, and outright physical

deterioration. Whatever it was wasn’t going to get better in successive jumps. Firenze

was one of the earliest purpose-builts, and God only knew what else

would need an update. Easier, likely, to replace the system entirely, from

sensor arrays that told the ship where it was to nav computer that told the ship

where it was going. That meant transferring funds from Alpha to Venture, for a system

that, if

replacing sensors and system

and

boards, could come in together and be

installed a lot faster than piecemealing it and trying to get it to talk. It was the

smart answer, but an expensive one. Alpha’s engineers had ducked that

choice. Alpha’s engineers wanted to keep station admin happy, and admin,

who had been spending all its credit on

Rights,

was not wanting a large

expense. Admin might look quite favorably on an option that took that problem off

its books. Particularly since

Rights

, that extremely expensive mast ornament,

had some ghosty issue of its own. Dare one figure that Alpha’s engees were no better at assembling FTL

systems than they were at analyzing a nav system, and that all their

assurances weren’t making

Right’s

exotic systems talk to each other any better

than

Firenze

’s antique ones were doing?

He shook hands with Min and the others, said, “I’m going to be visiting

admin. My crew will track me. But stay alert.”

Section iii

“Absolutely,” Min said. Oldest ally, Min, among the purpose-builts. Little

Bear

was a generation younger than

Firenze,

but she’d had two centuries of

upgrades. Mumtaz

was all new, and

Nomad

was middling-so. What they also were was

steady. There were two stations the plan had

looked for local resistance. One was Cyteen, with an admin they weren’t

approaching yet; and the other was here, in the still-beating heart of EC

authority. Which was easier to deal with?

He wasn’t sure. Benjamin Abrezio was

reported as a decent administrator. But he’d also been the recipient of gifts

from Sol, and still received his orders—dated as they might be—on the

ancient Stream. It was certain that when their merchanters’ alliance did make clear what

they’d come to say, the six-year Stream would be reporting it to Sol and

Earth. Not a happy reception there, he was well sure. But come mainday turnover, when the bars were again at their maximum

breakfast-supper load, Giovanna Galli was free to drop information that

would get attention from admin, and raise expectations among the

merchanters—who weren’t called that name, here on Alpha, but merchanters

they were, all the same. It was time. Chapter 5

A message from Niall was waiting for Ross when he arrived back at his

assigned room. Jen had had breakfast with them, helped get Fallan to his

room, then headed off with a wink. Matchmaking. Ross grinned to himself as he pushed the button, then froze. Niall wanted to see him. Just him. The guy who’d just spent the night with

a

Finity

girl. Immediately. Room B-257.

“How’s Fallan?” was Niall’s opening remark, as he waved a hand at a

chair. Ross sat. “Not bad. Not good, either. He lost a few minutes. Worries him.”

“It would. I’ll talk to him.”

Silence, while Niall stared at him. Then: “Ask it, Ross.”

His heart bumped up a notch—not guilt. But not guilt-free either, and he

wanted to know the depth of the problems they had. “So what happened with

Abrezio?

Are we in trouble?” It could involve fines. Big ones. “I don’t see as

we were doing anything.”

Niall shook his head. “He apologized to

us.”

“Apologized.” Station authorities didn’t call you in to apologize. “Took responsibility, but said it was the blue-coats acting solo. Unauthorized.”

“Well,

that’s

crazy.”

“I suspect there’s more to it. Chief Jameson’s not a bad sort. Wouldn’t

expect it of him. Which means it was likely an order from Hewitt. But that’s

station’s problem. Not our business. Abrezio said it won’t happen again.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it.”

Niall shrugged. “I got the feeling he wasn’t pleased. And ultimately, he is

in charge.”

Ross said, wryly. “Thank you, sir. I’m sure the entire Strip will be

relieved.”

“He asked about the meeting.”

Abrupt vector shift. This ...

this

was why he’d been called down. “So. What did you say?”

“The truth. What he said. They’ll know. They’ll be cross-checking every

record their cameras made, comparing every angle, looking for the smallest

suspicious twitch. You were in there, after. You actually talked to JR Neihart.”

Did I say that?

Ross wondered on the instant. But didn’t ask, before Niall

asked: “What did he say?

Assume everything matters.”

Ross shook his head. “Nothing. Just talked with his people. Had a beer,

with the rest of us. Said we should just relax and wait for the blue-coats to

sort it out. Kind of kept the lid on. A lot of Santiagos got caught there, too. They were at a back table, all worried. He told the bartender serve them

drinks, on him, and the bar did. Not everybody was happy, but most were. A

couple came up to the bar.”

“Mad?”

“Curious. Ashlan and Mary T and I, we just kept quiet and listened.”

“Did he say, about Fallan?”

“He didn’t know, then.”

“You think?”

“I didn’t hear anybody say it. I didn’t find out until I got

your

call. We’d

gone back to Rosie’s to listen for the gossip, but it was just buzz about the

blue-coats and them shutting the doors, and about what the

Finity

captain

said, what he didn’t say, and what he might have said, if the blue-coats hadn’t

shut us down. Same as everywhere. About JR, a little. Questions what he’s up

to.”

“You visited Fallan.”

“Straightaway, yes, sir, I did. Have you seen him?”

“Not yet.”

“He was looking better this morning.”

“You didn’t stay with him. You

were with a girl last night.”

He felt his face a little hot. “He said go. And she was waiting outside. Finity

captain had sent her ...

fourth captain, not senior. She knew about

Fallan. Her Fourth knew him from pusher days. And you’d said—you’d said

find out things. So—I did.” He refused to be embarrassed. He had left Fallan

only when Fallan told him to. “I put myself on call. Any alarm on those

sensors and I’d have gotten the call. I was right friggin’ next door. Sir. I was

doing what you ordered.”

“Not exactly.”

“In principle, sir. I’d have gotten a message. I’d have been over there

lightspeed. He said go. You know how he is. I can’t argue with him. He

was

threatening to stick labels on the medbot. That’s Fallan. He wanted me to get

out, so I got.”

“Girl’s name’s Jennifer Neihart.”

“Yessir. Jen.”

“Senior captain’s

niece. Daughter of his sister.”

“She didn’t say that.”

“Chance meeting?”

“She was sitting outside. Waiting. She had a gift for Fallan, from Fourth

Captain. Big bottle. Pell whisky.”

“Spendy. What did Fallan say?”

“This morning?

He was happy. Real happy. He’d hit it off with the woman,

long time back.”

“Fourth on

Finity. And the Senior’s niece. That’s heavy attention, that.”

“Fallan’s attention. We all know what he is. Everybody on Alpha knows

he’s special.”

“Except some damn blue-coat.”

“Except that. And it was a damn disgrace he got knocked down. All up and

down the Strip, people say so.”

“You were all up and down the Strip?”

“Jen said. Jen said her Fourth was real mad, that word’s passed, and there’s

a petition going up and down the Strip, stating it was the blue-coats’ fault, and

it was

pusher

crew got tagged. Don’t know if it was

Finity

that started it.”

Niall sat there, frowning. “We should have. The admin call—I guess I

made it pretty clear what happened. And we did get an apology from admin. And an offer.”

“Offer.”

“From the station.”

Dammit, he didn’t want to have messed up Niall’s situation with Abrezio. That was their livelihood and their future. But he didn’t like the notion that

what he’d seen and hoped for a moment—was just because he’d been a fool. A fool pulled completely off course by a pretty face and a bottle from the

richest ship going. Fallan

had

told him to go. He had already

been

going, on his own

judgment, when he’d run into Jen. Am I that great a fool?

He had to wonder. “So,” he asked Niall, “what does station say?”

“Just—what I told you beforehand. Finity’s

upsetting admin, no stretch of

the imagination. And they’re hinting a whole lot that’s not going to happen,

you know it’s not, Ross.”

“Rights.”

“Isn’t going to happen. So Fallan’s been approached and you have. You—

maybe coincidentally with Fallan, but it’s also possible

you

were the first

objective, since you were so friendly with them in the bar. And since you’re

young and ...”

“I wasn’t

friendly

with them ...”

“Well, you certainly were in the sleepover.”

He couldn’t dispute that. “

Finity’s

proposing what’s not going to happen, Ross. They know it. We’d

like to get past that. Find out what’s really on their minds, not just their

propaganda.”

“We. We, as in

Galway?

Alpha?

Or the EC?”

“A little of everybody. Abrezio’s not the villain in this. He’s had to deal

with Sol’s priorities for a long time: he needs to keep his reserves for

maintenance, he wants to keep both interests happy—yes, he’d like to have

the ship upgrades, the ring-dock ...

the works. But our situation’s different. We don’t have the volume the Farther Stars are moving. It’s not economical

for us.”

“We could run to Pell and back—if

Rights

could run at all.”

“And where from here?

Beta?

That’s out. The old stations?

They’re chancy

places leading nowhere useful, at the range we have to use. We sit at the head

of a highway that leads pretty well to Sol, and Pell had just as soon Sol never

travels it faster than sublight. Pell won’t help us. Pell has no percentage in

improving Sol’s port of entry into everything it’s got. Pell’s allied to Venture

—Venture’s colluded with them from the beginning. But the rest of the First

Stars—Pell had just as soon see lifeless. Deserted. A problem for Sol to

resurrect step by step. That’s

not

in our interest.”

“What Jen said—yeah, sure, we talked about it—was that the last thing

Finity

wants is any port shut down. That merchanters can’t make profit

without ports.”

“I’d like to think that. But truth is, profit comes with growth and while the

other

end of space is growing, this one isn’t. There was a whole lot of

suggestion and damned little substance in that speech of Neihart’s.”

“Which was sort of interrupted. Maybe it was going to what Jen said. Maybe he’s got a proposal from Pell, something Abrezio should hear.”

“Maybe. But why didn’t he just go to Abrezio and lay it out?

What else did

this Jen say?”

“That she didn’t know and couldn’t say if she did. That it was for her

senior captain to say.”

“Oh, that’s helpful.”

“If she asks me what

you

said or Abrezio said, all I can say is: I don’t know

and couldn’t say if I did. Which would also be the truth.”

“So maybe she’s dropping just the points she wants you to follow. You

going to see her again?”

Anger had no place between him and Niall. But it was real close. “No, sir,

not if you say not.”

“Good time?”

“No one’s business, Niall, sir, but ...

yeah. It was.”

“No reason to stop. Just be cautious.”

“And you’ll ask me what she said?”

“What do you think?”

“You want me to spy. Abrezio

wants a spy. Does

he

know I spent last night

with a Neihart, too?”

“For

all

of us, Ross. For the Family. For the ship. We need to know what

we’re in the middle of, and who’s lying to us.”

“Maybe nobody is.”

Niall put a hand on his shoulder. “Ross. Little cousin. Don’t try to make

everybody right. Won’t happen. Good spies get

accurate

information, even if

it’s upsetting.”

Little cousin,

hell!

He wanted to shrug off his captain’s hand ...

but he

didn’t. Because Niall was right. Damn it. Just ...

damn it. “You said there was an offer from Abrezio. Is it good?”

“It’s good. In the short run ...

preference on cargo. No dock charges on

this stay. And right now—it’s helpful. Our own cargoes have taken two hits

on the market, and these people have just been through the whole string of

stations with their offloads, no way they’re not. We’re not going to shine real

bright at Bryant’s, not after these ships have spread the wealth—so, yeah,

we’re officially a little worried.”

It made uncomfortable sense. He’d seen the market here bounce like mad,

seen speculation so hot it had triggered a four hour cool-down on trading—

ending in a serious depression in the cost of flour and Pell wine. Wasn’t all

bad. It meant lower prices. It was good for stationers, excepting those making

money on the market. Ships like this, moving through little stations—

destabilized things. “So we get our pick,” Ross said. “The way things are, it’s a good thing. And more than that. Good of the

ship, Ross. Good of the ship.”

“God.” Good of the ship ...

yes ...

but at whose expense?

Galway

wasn’t

the only Alpha ship hurting. We need all the ports ...

Jen’s voice whispering

in his head. All part of the web. All the ports ...

and all the ships. Damn. He’d never thought this way. Loyalty to the ship ...

yes ...

but

there was a bigger picture. One he was just beginning to see. “Just go enjoy the girl’s company. But take notes. It’s well possible

she

is.”

“To learn

what,

f’ God’s sake?

What should I keep close?”

“Not a thing. Tell them anything you know. Listen hard. Read between the

lines. Chance meeting or not, you’ve gotten attention and so has Fallan.”

That stopped him cold. “Don’t spoil it, Niall.”

“Spoil what?”

“Their Fourth, and Fallan. Don’t get in the middle of that. God, you know

how many years back that is, how long he’s remembered her?

And vice

versa?”

“Ross, lad, you

are

a romantic.”

“I happen to remember—”

“Och. Yeah, I have a heart. I appreciate the situation. But if you think

Finity’s

Fourth, in that great ship with four full shifts to run her, is a lissome

lass with nary a thought in her head—”

“If you think

Fallan’s

a fool—”

“We’re

all

fools, men and women. Or capable of being. You don’t get more

callous with the years and the ports: the anger and angst go, but the feelings

come on, with all the experiences heaped high. Good thing for us all that

wisdom generally comes with them, and you can lead our Fallan just so far,

but he’s the prankster and hard to catch. If she impressed him that much—and

if, whatever she was then, she saw him for what he is, maybe he’ll get a good

slice of the truth from her. And if he does or doesn’t, he’ll be sure it doesn’t

hurt us. I have no doubt of that. You

, being a young fool, are another question

at all times, Ross Healle Monahan. But I have to turn you loose. You’ll be

believin’ things Fallan wouldn’t, but there’s no way to stop you.”

That stung. “You could just say don’t.”

“I could. Should I?

And would it do any good?”

“Captain, sir, I’m not a fool.”

“We’re all fools. You didn’t hear what I said.”

“I heard. I don’t

intend

to be a fool.”

“Best a young man can do. Sleep with her but don’t get drunk with her. And don’t set your drink down.”

“It’s not my first sleepover.”

“The ship’s relying on you, Ross. On your good sense. Find some currency

we can spend in Abrezio’s office, and keep your wits about you.”

He didn’t like it, he

really

didn’t like it. He felt a little dirty agreeing to the

idea. But if

Finity

was intending harm to

Galway

...

however it came ...

He took a breath. “Yes, sir. I’m in.”

Section i

Chapter 6

So JR Neihart wanted to talk. Ben Abrezio wasn’t sure

he

wanted to talk to JR Neihart—not yet, and not

on the likely issue. Ships were supposed to be left accessible. Finity’s End

had

been left locked. That had just become clear, though it hadn’t been

his

choice to send

customs up there to try. He had, in actual fact, given orders that the visitor

ships were to be left alone, ever since the first one in had put “N” in the

“customs may access” blank, a response that had triggered an immediate

notification to his office. He hadn’t specifically targeted the customs office in

that order, but, dammitall, it was implicit and someone had ignored that

directive. Generally inspections were hit and miss, done occasionally, very

occasionally, most not going further than seeing the condition of the cargo

hold and checking the manifest for goods

not

offloaded as well as goods

delivered. The procedure

wasn’t

going to catch the bottles of expensive liquor

or the luxury goods up in crew quarters, destined for private sale at the next

station and not on the manifest. It wasn’t going to catch a pocket-sized packet

of drugs or hand-weapons in a cabin locker. If contraband wasn’t taken down

onto the Strip, its existence wasn’t station’s concern, unless there was

evidence of a significant shipment that was going to cause problems for the

next station. Not that customs ever found anything. Their local ships didn’t cause

problems. They hadn’t caught anything but a mistaken offload on two or three

crates reaching the cargo area in the last two years, and catching that was

actually to the ships’ advantage, as they’d have had to account for its absence

at the next station and hadn’t received credit on Alpha. Illicit passage—people-smuggling—wasn’t at issue with their own ships. And the number checked off at the lift on all these ships equaled the number

in sleepover rooms. And yet customs, even knowing the delicacy of the situation, had taken it

on themselves to inspect

that

particular ship, never mind he’d told them—

explicitly—to hold off on confrontation with the three previous outsiders?

He knew damned good and well

why

customs had made that decision, and

he had a strong suspicion that the stern reprimand he’d just sent down to

customs would ricochet into another office and cause a retaliation. But it was

a damned high and wide action, and a breach of order he didn’t intend to let

slide. Question was: which office?

He had a short list of possibles. Hewitt had high notions of his own EC-

granted authority. That authority did not, however, extend to the customs

office. But Cruz—

Cruz

could

have ordered that inspection, though it should have come to the

stationmaster’s office for approval before being implemented, particularly as

it directly countermanded Abrezio’s previous instructions. And Cruz, who had

near-unlimited authority where it came to anything affecting

Rights of Man,

would, more than anyone, want a good long look at

Finity’s

boards. Cruz might well have had the same thought that had come to

him

in the

night, and that idea entirely upset his stomach ...

It was a serious question, whether there was cargo undeclared in

Finity’s

hold, or whether she now stood empty—a massive ship that moved at massive

energy cost, transporting

nothing

material. It didn’t make economic sense. But Alpha had to be her turn-around point—didn’t it?

Had to be—unless

Pell

had what he had in that floor-safe, and meant to test

it with one of these four, maybe

had

tested it, long ago, and meant to send the

lot of them through, get the jump on the Sol markets and the all-important

connections ...

Damn. So now, thanks to Cruz,

Finity

was proved to have left her airlock

unaccessable, contrary to regulations, and within a very short time of that

attempt to board her, there’d been a meeting of the outsider captains at one of

Finity’s

restaurants. An Alpha ship captain, Giovanna Galli, had participated

in that meeting. Cause and effect?

Or coincidence?

A smart man assumed a

connection. But he didn’t know. Couldn’t. Station surveillance of that meeting had

been thwarted by equipment

Finity

had deployed. Interference with station systems in any way, shape, or form was against

the law. Violation. Locking a ship’s access while at dock was a violation. Meeting with a local captain was not a violation, but secret meetings and

talk that led to violations ...

was a violation. He had ample excuse to call in Giovanna Galli, for starters, at least to ask

what the outsiders had said. But while he was meditating that move, it was JR Neihart at his door,

wanting to talk to

him. Finity

had not played by the rules about access, and he was relatively sure

now that none of the other outsiders had either. Likely

all

the ships were

locked. He was

not

sure now that they were vacated, as ships were supposed

to be while at dock. Damn Cruz, for forcing this into the open, for pushing an already delicate

situation to the brink of ...

what?

The last thing they needed now was a

Finity-

led riot on the Strip, with damage resulting. Or a direct confrontation

with station police or

Rights

personnel. He wished he could believe it was all coincidence, the outsiders coming in,

Cruz pressing his authority. He wished he could convince himself that no one

knew about those coordinates in his safe, but he’d be a fool not to consider

that potential goldmine a possible factor. Maybe

Finity’s

arrival, maybe

everything Cruz was pulling was designed to trigger a takeover of

his

office ...

and those all-important numbers it harbored. Transmitting them on the Stream remained a risk. More so if either of

those factions knew about them. There was simply no knowing whether one

of those ships—or Cruz himself—had deployed something in the path of the

Stream—or whether something had long since been set there to tap into

everything. Time, of which he’d thought he had plenty, had suddenly become precious. Waiting for the next pusher to Sol seemed increasingly questionable. If he

sent the data today, it would make him potentially the savior of the EC’s

authority—but even at light speed, it would be six years for the information to

get to Sol, an unknown time to test the

validity

of the numbers, and even if the

numbers checked out ...

the situation here could well change before Sol

could take action. They had no defense if Pell learned about those

coordinates, less than none if Pell learned that he’d sent them to Sol. Pell

could demand he give the coordinates to these four Pell ships ...

in which

case, Pell got the jump points and, with these larger ships, an instant

stranglehold on the Sol trade. Or if Pell decided on a more radical course, like

taking over Alpha ...

These ships didn’t bring force enough to do that, physically, against all the

station inhabitants, but Pell

could

get an economic chokehold on

Alpha ...

by

simply refusing to sell them the biostuffs the residents of the station needed in

order to survive, until there were agreements set into place. Agreements that

would make Alpha an adjunct to Pell, not Sol. Section ii

Either way ...

it was

all

a question of time. The situation needed finesse, not confrontation. Finesse ...

when Sol had given him Andy Cruz—and Enzio Hewitt. Not

ideal, given the situation. They had worked together, he and Cruz. At times, especially before Hewitt

arrived, they had worked together quite well. Cruz understood that his one

and only function was to get and keep

Rights of Man

fit and ready, and keep

Sol’s most critical entry-point, Alpha, ready for Sol’s FTL breakout. Cruz

himself admitted, after his first decade on Alpha, that Sol’s first move out

here would bring in a batch of ideas that wouldn’t work and that

both

of them

were essential to Sol’s making a smooth transition. Since Hewitt’s arrival, however, all that had changed. Hewitt had no

patience with spacer politics, didn’t deal well with the social aspect of Family

officers. Bloody feudal system,

Hewitt called it. And increasingly, since

Hewitt’s arrival, Cruz appeared to share that opinion. Well, good thing for everyone involved that neither of them would be

involved in this upcoming meeting. Respect and tradition was the way spacers

worked. And the social niceties were the oil that made the machinery

function. A little whiskey, a little polite talk, a few suggestions—granted they

had a conflict of expectations, they’d work it out. He

was experienced in

dealing with the type. Sol’s golden boys refused to learn. So ...

“Send him in,” he said to the intercom, and waited. Chapter 6

Benjamin Abrezio, Director of the EC office on Alpha, stationmaster, as

stations outward called the post, a title Abrezio himself alledgedly preferred. By whatever name, Benjamin Abrezio

was

the executive authority, here on

Alpha. An authority not, from what JR had been told, without its challengers. Little Bear, Mumtaz

, and

Nomad

had done a good job of