Elene inclined to a mix of those beliefs, convinced, first, that Mazian was a threat diminishing rather than rising; second, that the end of the pirate wars would be a wind-down and never a provable victory; and third, that the critical danger to the human species was not in a Fleet mostly driven in retreat, secret base or no secret base. The Fleet had been the demon in the dark for so long that it had taken on a quality of myth, so potent a myth that Alliance and Union administrators alike need only say the dire word Mazian , and a funding bill passed
But the downside of that preoccupation with the Mazianni was an Alliance Council refusing to take their eyes off the Fleet and look instead to their primary competition: Union, the enemy the Fleet had fought before it turned to piracy.
Her own councillors said she was out of date, obsessed with history, unable to forgive the Estelle disaster. She should become more progressive in her thinking and give up the bitterness of a War grown inconvenient in modern politics.
Like hell.
“Seven years,” Elene said, stalking her topic as the waiters carried off the empty salad plates. She knew who was at surrounding tables, two of her loyal aides and the policy chairman. She knew this area of the restaurant, she knew the noise levels, precisely how far voices carried, which was not far at all. She’d have skinned the maitre d’ if he’d settled anyone in her vicinity who didn’t have a top clearance—since anyone who’d worked at all on the docks could lip-read, a skill which defeated the device she had also seen with the lights on, the one that also guaranteed the privacy of this table. “Seven years is too long to wait for a good supper, Finity . What are our chances we’ll see you more often in the future?”
James Robert’s expression was a parchment mask. The eyes, darting to hers, were immediately lively and calculating.
“Fairly good,” James Robert said, an answer the commodities dealers would be very interested to hear. “Granted Union behaves itself.” The inevitable stinger. Yea and nay in two breaths. James Robert to the core.
“We’re turning full-time to honest trade,” Francie said. “At least that’s our ambition.”
“Peaceful trade,” Madison added, lifting his glass. “Confusion to Cyteen and to Mother Earth.”
“To peace,” Damon said, more politic, and Francie and Alan emptied glasses to the bottom.
Then the main course arrived, a flurry of carts and waiters, during which Finity passed around the bottle and did their own wine-pouring, to the consternation of the wait-staff—they were spacers to the bone, and if the waiters couldn’t handle empty glasses fast enough, then they did for themselves, ignoring station protocols and etiquette as blithely as they’d done for decades. They were nothing if not self-sufficient and reckless of external protocols.
As the Quens had once been, on their own deck, Elene could not but reflect. And now the almost-last of the Quens finagled and hoped and connived for that right again, cursing the waiters dithering in and out at the wrong moment.
She could sway the internal government of Pell. That was half the Alliance. The approval of the Alliance Council of Captains—that was the sticking point in her plans. And that meant, significantly, the leadership of James Robert Neihart.
“A brave new world of peace,” she reprised, as the waiters and the cart went away, and before the conversation could drift, “ Finity , I have a proposal. Let me assure you we’re sound-secured here at this table, for a start, I think you know that.”
James Robert lifted his chin, looked at her through half-lidded eyes.
“A proposal for which I need funds and backing in Council.”
Her husband Damon knew exactly what she was up to the minute she made the opening: she was sure he did, and she knew he was holding all his arguments resolutely behind his teeth. Two decades was time enough to say everything there possibly was to say on the subject between them, and he couldn’t deter her now, make or break. If Finity’s End was here to declare the War was entering a new phase, if there was a change in the offing, she had her agenda.
“For what?” Madison asked “A crisis? A proposition?”
“Both,” she said. Finity was not that far out of the current of things, at any time. Finity’s votes in the Alliance Council were regular, received on the network of ship contacts that didn’t rely on hyperspace, just regular ship traffic at any station dock. “Peace with Union, yes, peace and trade, and ships , Alliance ships. Built at Pell .”
“We need another bottle,” Madison said, “for this one.”
James Robert, senior captain, hadn’t given his reaction to the topic.
She signaled a waiter, hand signal, for three bottles. The maitre d’ was in line of sight. The wine arrived. There was the ancient etiquette of the bottle, the glasses. The universe teetered on a mood, a small-talk graciousness that still prevailed. The waiter filled glasses and withdrew.
She was acutely aware in the interim of a stationer husband at her side, a patient man, a saint of a man, who slept alongside a shiplost spacer’s heartache and knew his home never was home to her. After two children and eighteen years, what was between them was no longer the blind love they’d started with. They’d seen and done too much, too desperately. But it was a lifelong commitment now, a partnership she’d never altogether betray because it had held the same interests too long. She reached, beneath the table, for his hand, and held it, a promise strong as an oath, keen as a cry.
“It’s a serious business,” James Robert said when the waiters were gone.
She knew all the objections. One rebuilt ship, as they’d debated time and again, opened up the question of what other War casualty ships might be resurrected and where those ships would fit in the trade routes of the Alliance, in an age when merchanters, with a vastly changed set of routes, were doing well, but not that well.
Never mind Pell’s internal debates in such a decision: merchanters, members of the Alliance Council of Captains, had suballiances within their ranks; and if Finity did her a favor on that scale, and backed her request for funds, then debts would come due left and right, other ships to Finity, Finity to other ships and to Pell—and Mallory. Favor-points in a merchanter crew meant owing someone a drink, a duty-shift. On this scale, one favor nudged another until it shook the recently settled universe all over again.
“I don’t truly ask your business or your destination at the moment,” she said. “I don’t ask why you’ve drawn what you have from the bank. That’s Mallory’s business or it isn’t and I won’t put you in the position of lying to me. But I’ll tell you what’s no news to you, and something we have to deal with. We both know that Union is getting past the Treaty. What may be news is that there are fourteen more ships pending construction. Union is building ships to put us out of business, and it’s doing it while we bicker.” Having mapped out her arguments for her ship in advance, oh, for sleepless nights and seven years, she tapped a finger on the table surface to make her points and ignored all logic of why a Quen ship should be first.
“I can name you the ships,” she said. “I can tell you which shipyards.” She’d almost lay odds that Finity could name them, too. But James Robert gave her not an iota of help or encouragement, the old fox. “One. The Treaty says Union won’t build merchant ships and Alliance won’t build warships. Two: Union is hauling cargo on military craft they’re suddenly building with damned large holds. I’m sure it’s no news. Three: We’re throwing our budget into armaments for our merchant ships and we haven’t built a single ship to counter the real danger. Don’t hand me the official deniaclass="underline" I wrote it. Four: We have a pie of a given size, but we can have a larger one.” Damn him, did he never react? She’d faced him in negotiation before, and remembered only now how hard it was. “ Five , cold facts and you know them: We’ll have no damned pie at all if we let Union build military merchanters and build nothing but guns, ourselves . The plain fact is, we’re in a new war, a war for trade, and guns won’t win it. We need new ships licensed. And we can grit our teeth, take the pain in the budget, adjust our trade routes and do that—or we can bicker on till we’re all Union ships and we have no choice.”