The black box system also continually affected the local station-use commodities market, as a shortage of, say, grain product on Fargone affected the price of grain product everywhere in known space. A tank blew out at Viking and a major Viking tank farm shut down a quarter of its production: the price of fish product, that bane of a small-budget spacer’s existence, actually ticked up 10/100ths of a credit everywhere in the universe, in spite of the fact that every station produced it and there was no food staple cheaper than that: somebody might actually have to freight fish product to Viking.
JR told himself this truly was a thrilling piece of news and that he should be pleased and proud that Finity was at last occupied with details like that rather than figuring how they could best spend the support credits they had to supply ships like Norway with staples and metal, out in the deep, secret dark of jump-points a ship laden the way they were loaded now couldn’t reach. They still would haul for Mallory—one run scheduled out when they were done with this loop, as he understood—but there were other ships appointed to do that, a few, at least, who regularly plied the supply dumps that Mallory used.
What was different from the last near-twenty years was that their schedule to meet Mallory at a rendezvous yet to be arranged didn’t call on them for their firepower.
And at Pell, they’d officially given up the military subsidy that fueled and maintained them without their trading. That was the big change, the one that shoved them away from the public support conduit and onto the stock exchange and the futures boards not with an informational interest in the content of the boards—but with a commercial one.
Safer, Madelaine had argued, to haul contract. That meant hauling goods for someone else who’d flat-fee them for haulage and collect all the profit, with a bonus if their careful handling and canny timing, or blind luck ran the profit above a pre-agreed amount, and liability up to their ears if something happened to the cargo. It was steady, it was relatively safe, it guaranteed they got paid as long as the goods got to port intact
But it didn’t pay on as large a scale as a clever trader could make both hauling and trading their own goods. They had the safer option; but Finity had never done contract haulage as a primary job, and maybe it was just the Old Man’s pride that he disdained it now. James Robert and Madison had been doing trading in ship-owned goods for a lot of years before the War, they’d watched the market survive the War and blossom into something both vital and different, and by what JR saw now, they just couldn’t resist it
The Old Man and Madison were, in fact, as happy as two kids with a dock pass, going over market reports. JR felt his brain numbed and his war-honed instincts sinking toward rust. All he’d learned in his life was at least remotely useful in what the two senior captains were doing, but not with the same application. He wasn’t even engaged in strategy thinking, like whether the ship near them might be reporting to Union command. They knew that Boreale would do exactly that—report to Union command—so there wasn’t even any doubt of it to entertain him.
Trade. Real trade. He still entertained the unvoiced notion that they were engaged in information-gathering and intrigue about which neither the Old Man nor Madison had told him. He went over the political and shipping news with a trained eye and gathered tidbits of speculation that—were no longer useful in the military sense, since they’d be outmoded by the time they got near someone who reported to Mallory.
That ship they’d met at Tripoint continued to haunt him, and after the staff meeting—knowing he’d lose points in the strange non-game they played, but not as many as if he asked on a current situation—he snagged Madison to ask with no hints about it whether that encounter had been scheduled.
“No,” was Madison’s answer. “They’re watching, is all.”
“Watching us.”
“Watching for anything the Alliance is doing. Seeing what our next step is. Being sure—odd as it might sound—that we aren’t negotiating with the Fleet for a cease-fire and a deal with Mazian independent of them. Earth’s made some provocative moves.”
Mark that for a blind spot he should ponder at leisure. It wasn’t enough to know the honest truth about one’s own intentions toward the enemy: an ally still had to plan its security in secret and without entirely trusting anyone. One’s allies could take a small piece of information, foresee double-crosses and act, ruinously, if not reassured.
And, true, Earth was building more ships, launching new explorations in directions opposite to the Alliance base at Pell.
That Earth might someday make peace with the Fleet and amnesty them into its service again… that was, in his book, a very sensible fear for Union or Pell to have; but that they themselves, Finity , and Norway , would someday make peace with the Fleet? Not likely. Not with Edger in the ascendant among Mazian’s advisors. Damn sure Mallory wouldn’t. Union didn’t remotely know Mallory or Edger if they ever thought that
But then… Union hadn’t had experienced military leaders when the War started. They’d learned tactics and strategy from the study tapes on which Union’s education so heavily relied. But most of all they’d learned it from the Fleet they were fighting, as the whole human race hammered out the tactics and strategy of war at more than lightspeeds and with relativistic effects and no realtime communications at all. He’d learned Fleet tactics by apprenticeship to the Old Man and strategy from Mallory. The Fleet had developed uncanny skills and still did things Union pilots couldn’t match. Union, on the other hand, sometimes did things that surprised you simply because it wasn’t what one ought to do… if one had read the ancient Art of War , or if one had understood the Fleet.
Union was always hard to predict. Sometimes its actions were just, by traditional approaches, wrong. Union was now their ally.
“Where do you suspect Mazian is right now?” he asked Madison. The estimation could change by the hour. Like the market, only with more devastating local consequences.
“I have absolutely no idea,” Madison said. “The way I don’t know where Mallory is, either.”
On the fine scale of the universe, that was not an unusual situation. “Do you think she knows where Mazian is?”
There was a longer silence than he’d expected, Madison thinking that one over, or thinking over whether it was needful baseline information, or a truth a senior-junior ought to figure out for himself. “I think Mallory knows contingency plans she’ll never divulge. I think she knows a hell of a lot she’ll never divulge. I think they’re her safety, even from us. Loose talk could reach Union. I don’t think their amnesty is worth a damn in her case.”