In point of fact, no, he hadn’t been. He’d lost what Jeremy was saying.
“About Esperance,” Jeremy said. “And the vid sims.”
“Lost it,” he confessed.
“Takehold imminent, time’s up, cousins. Get in those bunks or wherever, tuck down for a three-hour. Don’t get caught in the shower. We’re going to put a little way on this happy ship…”
“I said I bet they have some neat sims there, I bet Union has some we’ve never seen…”
“Probably they do.” Provoke Sue to hit him, grab her and hold her feet off the deck until she got scared, maybe, but it’d be a messy, stupid kind of fight and he wasn’t anxious to make himself a target for her to kick and hit and yell. He didn’t want Sue yelling mayhem and getting the whole crew against him. Chad and Connor were going to side with her. It wasn’t damn worth it.
He had to do something when the takehold quieted down.
He mumbled a “Sure” to Jeremy’s request to borrow his downer tape, and he pulled it out and passed it to him.
By then they were one minute and counting, and he scrambled to get his own music tape set up and snugged down with him.
He had two choices. Give up, let the situation bully him into that request to get off the ship—he had the excuse he’d desperately wanted, he’d established with JR that he wanted to leave and that he was justified, and what was he doing? Now he was fighting for his place here, not to be run out. He didn’t quite know why, or how he’d come to the decision—the kid he shared this place with was the reason, he thought, but not all of it.
He’d resolved somewhere, somehow, this side of Mariner, that they couldn’t run him out like this, because it wasn’t a simple matter, his going or staying. It wasn’t even entirely Jeremy, but the complex arrangement that made Jeremy and him partners.
One thing he knew: his going or staying wasn’t going to be their choice.
He had to talk to Chad. Alone.
He had to find out whether it was Chad’s notion to take him on, or whether Chad, like him, was somebody’s convenient target.
Chapter 22
The preparation for a long, double-jump run for Esperance had the feeling of the old New Rules back again. It had the feeling of clandestine meetings in the deep dark and the chance of shots exchanged. It seemed that way to JR, at least, and touched nerves only a few months ago allowed to go quiet. People had a hurried, businesslike look at every turn.
JR sat in the relative comfort of his on-bridge post as the engines cut in and the acceleration pressed him back into the cushion. He watched the numbers tick by, and saw around him a ship in top running order; saw the unusual status on the fire panel, unusual only since they’d declared they were honest merchanters again: the weapons were under test, and the arms-comp computer was up and working on their course, laying down a constantly shifting series of contingencies.
But space was empty around them.
It was that space ahead of them they had to worry about. And in this vacancy, they were running fast getting out of system and on toward what could be ambush of military kind at the next jump-point—or of diplomatic kind at Esperance.
Three hours.
Madeleine reported in to Alan, downtime chatter in the non-privacy of the bridge, that they had the legal papers from Voyager in order. Jake’s dry, nonaccusatory report from Lifesupport suggested unanticipated change of plans was going to create havoc in his service schedules and that he was going to request that half of the type one biological waste be vented at the jump-point rather than rely on the disrupted bacteriological systems to convert it.
When the ship being under power forced a long downtime, intraship messages flew through the system—Hi, how was your stay? Missed you last night, saw a vid you’d like, found this great restaurant…
There wasn’t so much of the interpersonal chatter at Voyager. It mostly ran: I’m dead, I’ve got frostbite, I’m getting too old for this, and, I saw vids I haven’t seen in twenty years. You know they’ve got stuff straight from the last century? At the same time, and more useful, various department heads, also idle but for the easy reach of a handheld, put their gripe lists through channels. It was a compendium of the ship’s small disasters and suggestions, like the suggestion that the long Services shutdown was going to mean no clean towels and people should hang the others carefully and let them dry.
There was one from Molly, down in cargo. JR: thought you should know. Chad and Fletcher had an argument during burn-prep. Jeremy broke it up, on grounds of ship safety. Chad accused Fletcher in the downer artifact business. Fletcher objected. All involved went to quarters for takehold. For your information.
There were six others, of similar content, one that cited the specifics of things said and added the information that it was not just Jeremy, Fletcher, and Chad, but that Sue and Connor had been there.
That built a larger picture.
There was a note from Lyra that said she’d heard from Jeff about the near-fight, but not containing the detail about Connor and Sue.
There was, significantly, no note from any of the alleged participants, and most significantly, there was none from Jeremy, who was supposed to report any problem with Fletcher directly to him.
The artifact matter was back on his section of the deck. They hadn’t time before Esperance to do another search; and the senior staff and particularly the Old Man were going to hear about the encounter, and worry about it. And that made him angry and a little desperate.
He sent back down to Lyra: The encounter between Chad and Fletcher. Who started it?
Lyra answered, realtime: My informant didn’t say. It was in the mess hall entry, a lot of witnesses. I could venture a guess.
Don’t guess, he sent back, trying to reason with his own inclination to be mad at Fletcher for pushing it; and mad at his own junior-crew hotheads for pushing Fletcher. He didn’t know the facts, Lyra didn’t know, and the facts of a specific encounter coming from scattered reports didn’t mass enough information on the problems on A deck in general. He wished he could go to voice, for a multiple conference with Bucklin and Lyra, to see whether three heads could make any better sense of the situation with the junior crew; but ops kept jealous monopoly over the audio channels during a yellow alert, and that would be the condition until Esperance.
He keyed a query to Bucklin, instead, fired him the last five minutes’ autosave and beeped him. For Lyra:
I want you to tag Fletcher. This says nothing about my estimation of who’s in the wrong in the encounter. There’re just too many on the other side for any one person to track. He sent the I’m not happy sign, older than the Hinder Stars.
Lyra echoed it. So did Bucklin. He, Lyra, and Bucklin owned handhelds, with all the access into Finity systems that went with it; and all the accessibility of senior staff to their transmissions. Nothing in Finity command was walled off from anybody at a higher level, and there wasn’t anybody at a lower level than the juniors were. He couldn’t even discuss the theft without the chance of some senior intercepting what was going on—and he didn’t want the recurrence of the matter racketing up to the Old Man’s attention. That he couldn’t find a solution was more than frustrating: it was approaching desperation to get at the truth—and the culprit wasn’t talking.
I’m coming down there for mess, he said. It was his option, whether to be on A deck or B, and right now it sounded like a good idea to get down there as soon as the engines shut down and crew began to move about.