The Old Man suggested the station officials could refuse to meet with a ship under accusation, but they’d damn well better arrange a meeting for an Alliance mission. Immediately.
Sitting aboard the ship, in lower deck ops, along with the other four captains, with the beep and tick of cargo monitoring the only action on the boards, JR. watched and listened to that exchange, on which Wayne ran courier. The Old Man was perfectly unflappable, pleasant to every cousin and nephew and niece around him. That was a bad sign for the opposition.
The Old Man dictated a message for Boreale , too, one to be hand-carried, a fact which said how much the Old Man relied on the security of station communication systems, even the secured lines, and all prudent officers took note of it. JR wrote the message down and printed it; and Wayne ran that one, too, while Tom B. ran courier for Madelaine’s office back and forth in an exchange with Esperance Legal to which JR was not privy.
The message to Boreale was simple. The suit is harassment and will not stand. We will vigorously oppose it and defend you in the same matter. We will hope for your attendance at one of our final meetings with ship captains at a time mutually agreeable, and hope also for your support of the pertinent treaty provisions with your own local offices .
What came back was:
We cannot of course speak for Union authorities, but we stand with you against the lawsuit. We also hold that, in accordance with both Union immunity and Alliance law, our deck is sovereign territory.
The latter sentence was complete irony. It was James Robert’s own hard-won provision in international law and the reason of the War in the first place; and Boreale was invoking it to prevent Esperance station personnel from entering their ship to search for records—as Finity held to the same right.
But Union held to no such thing within its own territory with ships signatory to Union.
“They stand with us,” Madison muttered when he heard the answer. “One could even hope they were on our side when they took out after Champlain and started this legal mess.”
“But dare we notice that station hasn’t charged Boreale ?” Francie said. “They’re very careful of Union feelings at this port.”
“Noticed that,” Alan said. “Question is, how high does Boreale’s captain rank over whoever’s in the Union Trade Bureau offices here. I think that Boreale has the edge in rank, barring special instructions.”
“I don’t take Boreale’s turning up at Mariner total coincidence,” James Robert said, breaking a long silence, and JR paid close attention, but as the least informed, he’d kept quiet.
Not coincidence. “So,” he ventured, “what was the carrier doing at Tripoint?”
“Mallory’s business,” Madison said. “We think that Mazianni operations have shifted from Sol fringes to a new area the other side of Viking. We thought there’d be something more Boreale’s size sitting there observing. We got a carrier and then Boreale’s presence at Mariner. And a Mazianni ship running for Esperance, the complete opposite direction, when taking out for Tripoint would have thrown it right into the arms of that carrier.”
He hadn’t thought of Champlain’s alternative course. Blind spot. Major blind spot. He was chagrinned.
“So it ran this direction.”
“Its chances were better with us. That carrier would have had it, no question, Boreale wanted it but couldn’t catch it, Boreale wanted them alive.”
It would be a source of information, one that Union science could probe with no messiness of courts, at least in the autonomy of the Union military operating in what was technically a war zone.
Maybe we should let them, was the unethical thought that raced next through his mind. Maybe we play too much by the law and that’s why this has dragged on for twenty years.
No. That wasn’t correct. Their playing by the law was exactly what this whole mission was about. Their playing by the law was the only thing that got the cooperation of hundreds of independent merchanters, who otherwise would have supported Mazian with supply at least intermittently and brought him back from the political dead the moment things grew chancy. The result would have been another, far deadlier war, with the whole human future at risk.
Cancel that thought.
“Various interests at Esperance aren’t willing to see Champlain answering close questions,” Francie said. “That’s my bet.”
“It’s mine, too,” Madison said. “I think it’s a very good bet. Champlain was dead if it had gone to Tripoint. It knew what was waiting there . It might stay alive if it ran this direction and threatened its own business partners. They’re here. On Esperance. At least one strong anchor for the whole Mazianni supply network is right here… the contraband, the smuggling, the illicit trade in rejuv, the whole thing. The other leak is probably Viking; but Viking isn’t our problem. Esperance is.”
It made sense. It finally made sense, how the web was structured. And what the gateway was for the high-priced goods to reach the paying markets, at Cyteen. Cyteen officials didn’t like it. But they still drank their Scotch, not looking closely enough at whether it came via a legitimate merchanter or whether it meant rejuv and biologicals were getting to Earth, to the wellspring of all that was human, in trade for supply for Mazian’s war machine.
The other captains discussed technical matters. The new one was just filling out the holes in his understanding of what they were doing, and why they were doing it, and why certain Cyteen factions would support them and certain ones wouldn’t. Some Cyteeners were defending their world. Others were making money.
Say that also about the position of Esperance in this affair. It had existed by playing Union against Alliance, supporting and not supporting Mazian. It was what the Old Man had said at Voyager: Mazian was essential… in this case, to Esperance. Maybe even to them… because without him, Union would have had Esperance, and the Alliance would have gone down Union’s gullet. As it was, Union would let Esperance slip firmly into the Alliance in return for secure borders—secure from a threat Union itself was helping fund simply because Union had an appetite for what their sole planet didn’t produce.
Like lifestuff that wasn’t poisonous, or otherwise deadly. Cyteen had made a great matter over its rebellion from what was Earthlike; Cyteen wielded genetics like a weapon; but when it came to creature comforts, Cyteen, just like some this side of the Line, didn’t look too closely at the label.
Like Pell, he thought. Like Pell, and its dinosaurs and sugar drinks scantly removed from where thousands had died. People forgot. People were human and didn’t look too closely at what didn’t look harmful. No single person’s little purchase of black-market coffee could affect the universe.
That was the dream people had, that little things were ignorable on a cosmic scale.
Wind blew through virtual foliage. Moist air brushed the skin. It wasn’t one of those sims that you wore a suit to experience. You wore ordinary clothes, and just put on disposable contacts. And walked.
And climbed. And walked some more. It might have been Downbelow, but it was too green. They walked over soft ground, and around trees, following a hand-rope.
A tiger was resting in the undergrowth. It stood up, huge, and real, right down to the details of its whiskers and the expression in its eyes.