"Came aboard at sixteen, sir. Born on a miner-ship."
Wolfe pushed his chair back on its track, got up, walked to the side of the desk. He wasn't armed. She'd thought he might be.
He walked to the side of her, walked around to her back. She didn't know what a civ would do under the circumstance, gone straight from dumb smartass kid to shipboard manners a skut better have to survive in the 'decks. And those said stand still and keep your mouth shut when a mof wanted to think what he was going to do about you.
Anything you say, sir.
Till you prove you're a fool, sir.
Till I know I got no percentage in anything, sir. Then I'll take a few.
But—
God, what'd they do with NG then? What'd NG do, himself?
Wolfe walked over to the low table and the cushion-chairs at the side of the office, meddled with something as if he'd forgotten her.
Maybe he had. Maybe he was just slightly crazy. Maybe he was going to see how long a skut could stand there without panicking and doing something stupid.
Indefinitely. Sir.
"Sit down," Wolfe said. She looked at him. He was offering her a chair at the office table.
That spooked her, when yelling wouldn't have. "Yessir," she said, and came and started to sit down, and then thought about her work-clothes and the chance of beer-spills, deck-dust or worse on that pretty white upholstery. She dusted off, for what good that would do, but Wolfe having sat down, she sat, opposite him, and watched him open the little box there.
Chess set. Real one, not just a sim. Real board, real pieces, God knew how old.
"You play?" he asked.
"Some," she said. In the 'decks you played anything and everything.
"Black or white?"
God, he was crazy, she was sitting here in the hands of a crazy man. "Your pick, sir."
He turned the box, gave her white.
So the first move had to be hers.
She frustrated him a couple of times, which he took with that same dead-cold, appraising look at the board that he gave to her while she answered his questionsc long, long after the shift-change bell.
What mining-ship?
What's Porey like?
Finally: How much elapsed-time on Tripoint-Pell?
Question that could kill a ship. Kill everyone she'd served with—if she was tekkie enough to know that answer down to a hair, what Africa'srunning-cap was.
But you had to know how much mass she'd been hauling.
Wolfe asked that too. And she honestly didn't know. The elapsed-time down to a half hour, but not a thing about the massc
"Made many runs in the Hinder Stars?"
"A couple. Mostly Pell-Mariner-Pan-paris. Wyatt's. Viking."
You'd remember that, sir. Remember it damn well, if you were a spook during the war.
While his fine-boned fingers moved a piece to threaten a knight, and a rook, some moves down.
"You remember the Gull?"
Name ought to mean something. There'd been a lot of names. They'd taken the Gull, a little ship, hell if she could sort out whether that was the one they'd blown or one of the ships that had decel'ed and taken boarders when they were operating at Tripoint.
Ship-corridors through the mask, past the green readout glow. Scared faces. Mostly scared faces.
Except the fools who tried to make a fight of it, locked body to body with a rider-ship, with marines oh their deck.
"Dunno, sir, we took it. Tripoint. I recall the name."
Something to do with you, sir? Or this ship"?
Wolfe didn't say more than that.
She took a pawn, worrying was she supposed to do that. Wolfe was a better player.
Wolfe was moves ahead, and he set you up a route he wanted you to take.
Did it this time.
"Shee—" she started to say, and swallowed it in time.
"Tac-squad," Wolfe said, moving a pawn. "Boarding party. Stations or ships."
"Yessir."
"Know what you're doing with docking equipment."
"Yessir."
"Weapons systems."
"Yessir."
She lost a pawn. Was going to lose a knight. She saw it. Moved the rook.
Damn.
"Armor?"
"Yessir."
"What do you think about this ship, Sgt. Yeager?"
"I'm not a sergeant anymore, sir."
"What do you think about this ship?"
"I got friends aboard."
"On Africatoo."
That was a hard thought; and damned clear what he was asking. "Yessir. But no way this ship could take her, and if she could, that's the way it is, got friends there, got friends on board here." She moved the threatened knight. "Don't even know who's alive anymore. Here I do. Me, for one."
"If you weren't on board?"
She honestly thought about that, put herself back on Africa, with Lokifor a target. Her hand hovered over a pawn and she lost her focus. Saw herself up on charges, old Junker Phillips' face—
"Have to shoot me," she said, and made the move, giving up the pawn. "I dunno, dunno I could ever get to that, sir. But I got people here—got a lot of people on this ship."
"So I've heard."
Heard about me and NG. God, I got him in trouble, maybe Musa, too, if Musa wasn't what he is—
McKenzie—Park and Figi—all those guys—
Maybe Bernstein, too.
Wolfe took the pawn. She took his knight.
She saw it coming, then. Rook took queen in four moves. Check and mate.
She bit her lip, surveyed the board.
Knew Wolfe was several moves ahead in the other game, too.
"You can go," Wolfe said.
"Thank you, sir." She got up carefully, as if the whole place was rigged with explosives. She was sweating. She only half-felt the pain in her back.
What do I say? Enjoyed the game, sir?
Wolfe let her walk to the door, let her open it, let her walk out into the restricted section by herself.
She walked through to the bridge, through Fitch's territory to the med-area corridor, through the galley to rec and the darkened quarters.
0258 alterday.
She went to Musa, told Musa she was back. Musa was wide awake, asked her: "You all right, Bet?"
"Fine," she whispered back, only then getting a bad case of the shakes. She went right on over to NG's bunk, but Musa followed her, Musa said, "He's sleeping one off."
Sleeping one off, hell. He was tied to the damn bunk, out cold. "Dammit," she said, popped him a light one on the cheek and started working at the knot, shaking so badly she could hardly work the cord through, especially when NG came to a little and started pulling. "What'd you give him?"
"Figi's sleeper hold, for starters.—He's all right. I've been watching him."
"Hell!,—Hold still!"
"Betc"
He wasn't crazy. Not half as crazy as where she'd been. She got him loose, he hugged her till he hurt her back, but she didn't mind that. She had sore muscles and he had a bitch of a hangover, evidently, because he made a miserable sound and held his head.
"Fitch?" he asked.
"Wolfe," she said.
He dropped his hands. Musa said, beside her, "What happened?"
"Captain wanted a chess partner," she said, and almost spilled what Wolfe had been asking her for three hours, she was so aching tired and so rattled. She got it together, remembering nobody in the 'decks knew what the mofs knew about her. Most of all NG
didn't know. And she didn't know how long that would last or what he would do when he found out.
Merchanter, lost from his ship. And there was one way, in the War, that that would have happened.
"That was all," she said. "We played chess."