Junior officers were expected to guess, and to hone their strategic skills against real situations, trying to outfigure senior officers. But it didn’t help junior officer nerves. He’d taken himself up to B deck at breakneck speed, unshaven, still in flight-slippers, and checked in on the bridge. So had Madison, who was supposed to be the next shift, and who obviated all necessity for him to stay here—but stay he did.
In the duty of second-guessing command without disturbing operations, JR went up to Scan 5’s post and simply observed for a moment, in order not to disturb the critical, multilevel operations of that post.
“Rider status,” he asked Scan 5 after a moment of stable display.
“Uncertain,” Five reported without turning in his chair. “Carrier ID confirmed as Amity . Output normal, range 5 minutes.”
The carrier, five minutes away as light traveled, had resumed ID output, a measure of confidence as it looked them over. Scan and passive-recept alone, however, couldn’t entirely confirm what Amity was doing, whether it was sitting there with its several rider-ships still attached and therefore harmless, or whether it had already deployed them as heavy-fire platforms, lying transmission-silent and ready at various points about the area. Finity ’s optics were surely in play, along with other methods of search.
The carrier hadn’t obliged their optics by turning a profile that would make its status clear, either. He saw the fuzzy image and the enhancement and didn’t take that situation for a chance arrangement in their relative positions. Five minutes was close, as ships reckoned entry positions. It was not close in targeting.
They had had an uneasy working arrangement with Union military that had held for nearly two decades. They’d even worked, though not lately, with this particular carrier. Both Alliance and Union protected their secrets, and Union was still very wary, particularly of Mallory’s intentions, even after two decades.
Bucklin and Lyra showed up to take their stations: apprentice-posts, unassigned chairs, like his, that left them able to observe, not necessarily to work at this critical juncture. He made a quiet approach to his own regular post, near the Old Man and Madison, noting that by now in ordinary procedure their bridge shift should have changed. Madison’s team was held, not yet called to duty, and that changeover might be delayed indefinitely.
Then the Old Man engaged Com. Voice meant that senior officials had now made station on the carrier, if they hadn’t been there at the moment of their entry. JR sat beside Bucklin and Lyra and put in his earpiece to catch the drift of that message, relieved to hear the Old Man’s voice addressing the Union captain in a casualness that didn’t betoken hostility.
Reassuring. There was code passing, now, he’d bet, words that didn’t quite fit the conversation, and there was at the same time he noted a relaxation of the Old Man’s features, a little hint of humor.
Madison spared JR a direct glance, a nod, a handsign that meant, ordinarily, Ours, but meant, here, JR believed, Friendly approach.
A time-lagged response from Amity came then, that said:
“ Greetings from the admiral and his respects for your efforts at Wyatt’s, Captain Neihart. You may pass that along to your colleague on Norway. I must say your appearance is a surprise. I trust it forecasts success and not bad news at Earth. Where are you bound ?”
“ Esperance. We’ve resigned from the chase, sir. We’ve gone simply to routine cargo-carrying on this run, and we’ll be back in the trade from now on if things go as we plan. The pirate hunt is growing thin, success in that regard. Now we have to teach these young people of ours the merchant trade, give them a new view of the universe. Greetings to the admiral and our hopes for future cooperation. We’ll be quick to respond if we do spot trouble—sorry about that reposition—but we’re hauling cargo now and we’ll even be taking mail from time to time. Earth’s as stable as I’ve seen it and we hope to have eliminated some of the flow of goods we were concerned about. Salutations from our colleague and expectations of good news from your arena. ”
Time-lagged conversations tended to run simultaneously and to change topics multiple times in the same paragraph, following the informational wavefront that had just come to the speaker.
“ I wish I’d had the wherewithal to load full at Sol ,” the Old Man said, “ A load of whiskey, chocolate and wood on our last run, however. I’ll send you over a bottle of Mallory’s favorite Scotch. Her compliments. And mine. ”
Audacious. And from Mallory? A Union carrier might not want to swallow a pill Finity dispensed, fearing bombs or biologics. But it was a handsome gift at the prices that prevailed past Pell
A startling implication of connections and conduits of information. The hell , then, they hadn’t known some Union contact might be here. Yet it had startled Helm, appearing as it did? Revise all estimates: they’d expected a smaller ship, but some ship.
The junior officer, kept in the dark and fed whatever data he could find by feel, could at least surmise the fact that they’d expected someone, and spooked for fear of the size of what they’d found. Helm might not have picked it up from buoy input. Helm might have read the interface itself, and been just that fast reacting to the unexpected.
“ Delighted to receive fire ,” one of the most powerful warships in space answered that offer. “ Good voyage to you , Finity.”
A Union carrier was going to search empty space for a beeper-can and a bottle of Scotch whiskey?
Orders were passing. The ops crew down on A deck was finding a cannister, basically a smuggler’s rig, certainly not something you could buy at a station outfitters—and an item which they did chance to have, by some cosmic and unsuspected luck.
As he listened, Lyra, as the available junior-most crew, found herself dispatched on an unusual mission to the captain’s private bar.
“Is Scotch all of it?” he asked Madison as the attenuated conversation wound down to sign-offs.
“Smart lad,” Madison said, and nothing more.
So there was something from Mallory that didn’t involve Scotch, something that they’d been carrying in event of some such meeting somewhere along their course, and that a Union carrier was now going to pick up.
Curious dealings they had. No, they wouldn’t poison-pill a Union carrier. Not on their fragile lives. There was something going on in this voyage that he’d lay odds wasn’t in the line of trade: Mallory’s business, almost certainly so, and Mallory was always a wild card in the affairs of Pell Station, apt to take any side that served her purpose. She was a former merchanter, former Fleet officer and bitterly opposed to Union. And had worked with Union against the Fleet. There was no side she hadn’t been on, at one time or another, including Earth’s.
If Mallory was out there keeping an eye on something, even expecting this carrier, or a carrier to be operating on this border, then there was something afoot. He thought Mallory was back near Sol.
But there were some things for which the senior captains gave no answers because there was no need-to-know, and because crew on liberties were vulnerable and sometimes too damned talkative. Even Family crew.