Iverson's face twisted with resentment. "So you waited," he continued in a bitter voice, "like the rest of the carrion-eaters who have feasted on the Fleet since Triannic's xaxtdamned Treaty of Garak."
"Think what you will, Iverson," the little man said with a grim scowl. "But were it not me here, someone else would be scrapping those ships." He touched the neck clasp of his cloak. "Like others, you mistake good business practices for traitorous double-dealing. But I am just as patriotic as the next man on Avalon, perhaps a little more, were the truth known."
"More like a thraggling CIGA, from where I stand," Iverson sulked.
Jaiswal's lip curled with ill-concealed rage. "Fortunately," he said, drawing a saffron plastic envelope from his cloak, "I am under no obligation to endure your petty insults. But you are under obligation to pay this."
"Yeah," Iverson groaned, with a look of utter defeat. "I know—let me have the invoice."
With a grim little smile, Jaiswal handed it over.
Iverson glanced at the scrap of plastic, then set his jaw and took a deep breath. "Pretty xaxtdamn sure of yourself, weren't you," he snorted. "You've already included the tow to the breaker's yard."
Jaiswal shrugged indifferently. "I can make you a separate invoice, should that be necessary."
"Maybe I'll get some other estimates," Iverson spat back petulantly.
"Suit yourself, Iverson," Jaiswal sighed with a detached shrug, "but your rent on my gravity pool is high, as are the fees for my tug that even now waits—with its meters running—to tow this ship to the breakers."
Iverson clenched his fists and looked down at his worn boots. "I suppose you already know how much old Jamestown's worth as scrap."
"To the very credit," Jaiswal said, inspecting his fingernails. "I had an estimate made from my tug. The amount you receive will precisely cover the credits owed to your crew plus my towing invoice, with a modicum extra that will pay Mr. Brim, here, for making the trip. Imperial law requires a certified Helmsman aboard all commercial tows, as you know."
"You bastard," Iverson groaned lifelessly. "I'm almost sorry Brim didn't let her sink."
"She would have sunk, Iverson," Jaiswal reminded him, hands at his chest, palms up, "without Brim at the controls. And you would now be up to your reddish neck in murder charges for every passenger lost in the crash."
Iverson shook his head and looked at his feet again. "You don't have to remind me," he said.
"I assume it is settled then?" Jaiswal asked. "Shall we tow this wreck to the breakers before you owe me more credits than she is worth?"
Iverson peered around the cabin for a moment, fastening his gaze finally on Brim. Peretti and Hamlish were already packing their gear. "You'll ride her?" he asked.
"Yeah," Brim agreed, "I guess I might as well. Looks as if that's the last I'll ever get from StarFleet Enterprises."
"You're right there, Brim," Iverson assured him. "Poor old Jamestown was the last card I had to play."
Then he laughed cynically. "Nergol Triannic and all his StarFleets never even touched me during the war.
It took the CIGAs and their xaxtdamned peace efforts to really mess up my life."
"And shatter the Fleet," Hale added from the companionway. A small traveling case hovered at her heels, and she was dressed for the outdoors.
Brim stepped to the hatchway, frowning. "I guess you heard you'll get paid," he said, a discreet specter of perfume tempting his nostrils.
"Yes, thank the Universe," she said quietly, "Hamlish left the COMM channel open."
"I guessed that Jaiswal might do something like that," Brim said. Then, on an impulse, he took her hand—surprisingly soft and warm in his. "What can I do to help you?" he asked.
"You're helping right now," she said softly, smiling down at her hand. "And, of course, I am still alive."
Brim frowned and shook his head. "No," he protested. "I mean—"
"I know what you mean," she stated quietly. "And I appreciate it. But there's nothing much anybody can do about me—except myself. Besides, Mr. Brim," she said with a wink, "you'll be tied up for at least two days with the tow, and by that time, I intend to be well on my way—wherever that way turns out to be."
Brim nodded and released her hand. He expected that she'd waste no time. Unless he missed his guess, there was considerable resilience under all her feminine sleekness. "I hope our paths cross again, Pam,"
he said. "You're pretty special."
"You're pretty special yourself, Mr. Wilf Ansor Brim," she chuckled grimly. "Maybe we can get together the next time." Then she peered past him into the bridge. "Don't take any wooden credits, gang," she laughed. "Especially you, Jaiswal—I'd hate to hear that there was anybody around slick enough to take you for a ride."
"Even wooden credits from such a sweet hand as yours would seem precious to me, splendid lady," he said, bowing elaborately and fixing her with a penetrating stare. "Perhaps I can drop you off somewhere in my limousine."
Hale raised her eyebrows, and she considered the dark little man for a moment with new interest. "All right," she said at length, "perhaps you can." She turned for a moment to wink at a surprised Brim, then started back down the companionway, her traveling case bobbing along the treads after her. "I'll be outside the brow, Jaiswal," she called over her shoulder. "Don't be long." Then, except for the exquisite afterglow of her perfume, she was gone.
The scrapyard of Z. Jaiswal & Co., Shipbreakers, at the dismal seaside town of Keith'Inver was ugly—extravagantly so. Located on Inver Bight, a bend of the Imperial continent's bleak and nearly treeless boreal coast, the mean little village incorporated cheap wooden housing, bad sewers, and worse pavement. During winter, which was both heavy and long, the air was chilly, and the dampness penetrated to the marrow of one's bones. Local dwellers coughed and sneezed and watched advertisements for useless patent remedies, in an age that had all but forgotten disease. It was a grim annex of the Imperial capital that never appear in tourist ads. Due to a perverse ocean current, its sky was gloomy most of the year, as were its gray, squalid landscape and most of the structures that interrupted its cheerless uniformity.
Defunct and empty, City of Jamestown listed silently in thick quayside scum, moored alongside the unkempt corpses of I.F.S. Treacherous, a relatively late-mark T-Class destroyer, and the battle-worn I.F.S. Adamant, an ancient frigate. Behind these luckless starships, busy cutting torches were already throwing showers of sparks over the grimy, opened hull of I.F.S. Conqueror, once-mighty flagship of Vice Admiral (the Hon.) Jacob Sturdee during the historic battle for Atalanta. Busy, weather-blackened derricks hoisted massive plates of dulled hullmetal from the great starship's savaged cadaver and dropped them unceremoniously into waiting scrap barges bound for collapsium forges elsewhere in the galaxy.
Halfway across the bay, a cloaked, one-eyed hunchback with a crooked mouth and twisted hands bent over the controls of an open ferry taking Brim to Keith'Inver's public dock and the single daily train to Avalon City. The Carescrian shivered in biting, wind-driven dampness, hardly able to gaze back at the old warships. But no matter where he cast his eyes, some gallant vessel was being dismantled. Z. Jaiswal