—iv—
DAMN COM BEEPED. INSISTENTLY. If it wasn’t a screaming emergency, the perpetrator was dead.
Austin Bowe reached out an arm from under the covers, in a highly expensive station-side room, seeking toward the red light in the dark.
Which disturbed… whatever her name was. Who moaned and shifted and jabbed an elbow into his ribs as he punched the button.
“Austin.—What in hell do you want?”
“Sprite’s inbound.”
He blinked into the dark. Thoughts weren’t doing too well. Too much vodka. The fool woman sat up and started nuzzling his neck. He shoved her off. Hard.
“Captain?”
“Yeah, yeah, I copy.” The brain wouldn’t work. The body felt like hell. “Have we had any word from them?”
“No. They’re in approach.”
“What the hell are you doing on watch? Is this Bianco?”
“Yes, sir.”
“They’re in approach.”
“I’m sorry, sir. No excuse. About two hours from mate-up.”
“That’s just fucking wonderful. Can we not discuss it here, possibly? Where’s Christian?”
“I—hate to tell you this, captain.”
“All right, all right, find him. Dammit!”
“What are we to—?”
“Make it up, Bianco, damn your lazy hide, we’ve got a problem. Use your ingenuity!”
What’s-her-name put an arm around his neck. Said something he wasn’t listening to. Beatrice was on the dock somewhere. Their son was likewise somewhere on the docks, supposedly seeing cargo moved, but Corinthian didn’t know where Christian was at the moment?
“Aus-tin,” the woman said. “Is something wrong?”
“Damn dim-brain,” he muttered, and got up and looked for his clothes.
“That’s not nice.”
He found the light-switch. Glared at the fool, who looked scared and shut up.
Stationer, he remembered that. He had a headache to end all. He didn’t know how he’d ended up with a total fool. Crewwoman off a station-sweeper would have better sense than hang onto a ship’s officer with a trouble-call.
He dressed.
“Are you coming back?”
“If I do, you’d better have your ass out of here.” He pulled on his sweater. If he got any rest, he’d want rest, not present company, a bar-crawler with a libido too active for her bank-employed husband.
Hawkins. Worst damned mess he’d ever gotten into. Sending him death threats for more than twenty years. Psych case, as best he figured it, if not then, definitely now.
Woman with a problem. Cargo chief, market and commodities expert, as he got the make on the Marie Hawkins—looking for a way to get him, which might not be with a gun or a knife, give the woman credit for brains and professional expertise, which he hadn’t, the night he’d made one of the prime mistakes of his life.
And gotten a son who was reputedly on that inbound ship, as Marie Hawkins had continually been solicitous to let him know.
Damn. Damn and damn.
Station probably didn’t remember the incident. Stationers had a lot of trouble figuring ship-time, and hell if any ship actively helped them do it. Mariner’s records were blown to cold space, nothing he knew of had transferred, and Corinthian was clean at Viking.
So far.
“Aus-tin?”
“Damn you, you pay the tab, I’m fucking bored!”
He keyed the exit, he left at a fast clip, he didn’t know why he’d ever thought the stationer fool worth the price of the room, except Beatrice had her agreement, and they kept it, and that meant Beatrice had probably found herself some young piece foolish enough to think he could handle an exotic experience.
Which, if she’d snugged in for the duration of their scheduled layover, meant that finding Beatrice wasn’t a minor problem, either.
Beatrice wasn’t on cargo duty. Christian was. Austin walked out the fancy doors and onto the docks and took out the pocket com.
“This is Austin. Bianco, any information?”
“Sabrina’s looking,” Corinth-com said. “Christian’s been in touch off and on. I think he’s on green, right near the Transship office. He’s been in and out of there.”
“That’s just real good. Where’s our friend coming in?”
“Berth 19. Orange.”
Considerably separated from them, around the rim. That was a vast relief. “They request it?”
“I don’t know, captain. I didn’t think—”
“Right. I copy. I’m coming back to the ship. General recall, all staff who aren’t on a job.”
“I’m on it,” Bianco said.
As well say Red Alert. He didn’t want to talk cargo where station could pick it up, although he didn’t expect Viking to have any suspicion of trouble. Marie’s brother was captain on Sprite now, he’d heard that. Possibly Sprite had had no idea Corinthian was here, but it wasn’t Sprite’s ordinary route. Possibly they’d come in on the new station status.
Or possibly Hawkins had gotten information that made this no chance meeting at all.
And Hawkins, with her particular skills, was extremely bad news.
He started walking, looking for a ped-transport. Corinthian being on alterday schedule, meant dealing with second-tier station authorities, who didn’t always ask close questions, as well as avoiding some of the traffic that clogged mainday official channels. It had its advantages. But on the docks mainday and alterday were meaningless; the bars and shops were always open and there was always night, always darkness above the floodlights that lit the girders, up where the lights and the cold of the pipes made their own weather.
Warehouses. Processing areas. Factories. Food production. Fabrication. The place dwarfed everything but the ship-accesses and the machines that served them.
And a crew scattered on a two-week liberty with all of Viking Station to lose themselves in—was no easy matter to locate, individual by individual, in every tiny sleepover and bar on the strip. Christian had a com. The duty staff all had corns. Certain people weren’t answering.
One of Marie Hawkins’ most logical targets wasn’t damned well answering.
—v—
You didn’t expect a happy hello from Marie. You interrupted her at work and you took your chances. But Tom thought he should at least try, after the burn. The market figures were up on the screens. Marie, two senior cousins and four juniors were sorting through the usual welter of incoming stock market and commodities data off station feed.
But not the usual. He’d lay odds Corinthian’s arrival date and market dealings were somewhere in the figures on Marie’s monitors. She keyed the displays, in rapid sequence, to Privacy.
He leaned against the desk, arms folded: “I just thought I’d check on you.”
“I haven’t turned blue. What did Mischa say?”
“Mostly that he trusts you to do your job. Right or wrong?”
“Son of a bitch.”
“Which one of us?”
Marie slid him an oblique, grey-eyed look, and lifted a brow. Easy to understand how a man twenty years ago had made a move on Marie Hawkins.
“Outside of Corinthian,” he said, “how does it look?”
She caught that implication. He saw the second quirk of her brow, the tightening at the corner of her mouth.
“You’re bothering me,” Marie said, leaning back in her chair, folding her hands on her stomach. “Go somewhere.”