Rimrunners (6 page)

it down with a mouthful of soda and took a breath.

So she made her leisurely stroll toward the corner where the public monitor was,

because it was just the longscan had gotten the info from the zenith buoy, and

that was an hour and a half light away.

Thule was a dim double star, hardly more than a moderately treacherous jump

point, no traffic: the buoy was close-in, and that ship, if it was Mary Gold, a

day and a half early, had probably just shaved a quick lighthour or so off that

distance in the V-dumps since that information had started on its way to Thule

Central. Which still put her some hours out at realspace V, and a long, long

burn to go, plus another hour on docking once she got close-in.

A cold-hauler, Mary Gold, just the regular supply run out from Pell. And on from

here to Bryant's, that was the schedule. Moving less mass than expected, she

reckoned: that could speed a ship up a day, easy. Thank God.

But when she got to the corner where the monitor gave its tired, gray cycles of

information, the shipname was AS Loki.

Her heart ticked, just a single bewildered jolt.

Who in hell is Loki?

She stopped, ate a couple of cheese puffs, washed them down and stared at the

progress marker on the vid. She wasn't the only one. Dock workers gathered

around to wonder.

It was coming in smartly enough. It was an Alliance ship designation.

Her stomach felt upset. She heard somebody speculate it was a Unionside

merchanter, just come into the Alliance.

Not unless it was some damn tiny ship, she thought, something come in from some

godforsaken arm like Wyatt's Star, clear on Union's backside: she knew every

shipname that was worth knowing, knew the Family name, the cargo-class—and the

armament class. Down in Africa's 'tween-decks, shipnames and capabilities were a

running topic. The skuts in the 'decks might not be able to do a thing in a

ship-fight, but if you were down there strapped into your rack and your ship was

going into a firefight, what the cap was on the other ship was a real important

topic; and if you were going to have to board after that, go onto some

merchanter's deck into twisty little corridors full of ambushes, you liked to

know those little details. Damn right.

She ate her cheese puffs, she watched the data unfold—then suddenly she

remembered the time and she ducked out of the crowd and hurried on down to the

Registry.

"I wondered if you were coming in today," Nan said, at her desk as she slipped

in the door.

"Sorry." There was a reg about eating and drinking in the front office.

"Breakfast. I'll dump this in the can. 'Scuse."

"You know what ship that is?" Nan asked.

She shook her head. "Thought I knew 'em all. Spooks." Trooper word. It was

getting to be common, since the War, but she wished she hadn't said that. She

oozed past Nan and into the back hall, where Ely met her and asked, "You know

that ship?"

"Just saying: no, sir. New one."

Ely looked worried. Well he should. She went on into the back-office work area,

tipped the last of the puff-crumbs into her mouth and washed them down with the

dregs of the soda, chucked the foil and the can into the cycle-bin before she

walked out where the vid was.

Where everybody was: Ely, Nan, the three other clients looking for jobs this

morning, all standing, all watching the vid and not saying a thing, except she

got looks from the three stationers that maybe added her up as an honest-to-God

spacer and maybe a source of information.

"Do you know—?" one started to ask her.

She shook her head. "New to me, mate. No idea." She folded her arms and looked

at the numbers, heard one of the stationers say that looked like an all-right

approach, the numbers didn't look like a strike-run.

Depends, station-woman. Depends on the mass. Entry vector. Lot of things,

damnfool. Sometimes you got to maneuver. And we lied to those buoys, damn if we

didn't.

She watched, standing there with her arms folded, thinking, the way the

stationers around her had to be thinking, that it could be one of the Fleet;

feeling, the way the stationers certainly weren't, a little stomach-unsettling

hope that it was one of Mazian's ships.

Hope like hell it wasn't a Fleet ship going to pull a strike for some reason,

and hole the station.

And hope while she was at it that any minute that single blip was going to start

shedding other blips, that that screen was going to go red and start flashing a

take-cover, and Africa itself, with its riderships deployed, was going to be on

station com, old Junker Phillips himself telling a panicked Thule Station that a

Fleet ship was going to dock, like it or not.

She watched. She bit her lip and shook her head when one of the stationers asked

her about the numbers. She listened while the com-flow from station intersected

the com-flow from the incomer, all cool ops, station asking the intruder for

further ID and a statement of intent, the intruder within a few minutes light,

now, but going much, much slower.

Decel continuing, the numbers said.

"Huh," she said finally, figuring there was nothing much going to happen for a

while, so she went over and sat down, which got a momentary attention from the

stationers, who looked at her as if they hoped that meant something good.

So she relaxed. Watching on vid, waiting to see, was hell and away more

comfortable than they'd gotten between-decks, just the audio, the com telling

them what they absolutely needed to know, while the ship pulled G and racks and

paneling groaned like the pinnings were going and somebody's gear that had been

loose when the takehold rang became a flock of missiles.

Nan and Ely drifted back to work. One of the job-seekers went over to the

counter to finish an application, but the other two just stood there looking up

at the vid.

"This is Loki command," the vid said finally, amid the muted, static-ridden

comflow that had been coming through. "Clear on your instructions, Thule

Station. We're a fifteen tank, running way down."

God. No small tank on that thing.

"This is Thule Stationmaster. We've got a scheduled ship-call, Loki, we can do a

partial."

Bet sat there with her feet in a scarred plastic chair and listened, with her

heart picking up its beats, brain racing with the figures while the timelag of

ship and station narrowed, but not enough.

An unknown and a tank that size. Claiming Alliance registry.

Thule Control reported the incomer had done the scheduled burn.

"Thule Stationmaster," the same voice came over the com, finally, "this is Loki

command. We're carrying a priority on that fill. Request you route us to your

main berth."

The stationers finally figured out priority. There was a sudden tension in them.

Bet sat there with her feet up, arms folded, knowing it was still going to be a

while, with her heart thumping away in leaden, before-the-strike calm.

Priority. There was only one berth on Thule with a pump fitting that was going

to accommodate a starship. The pump was two hundred years old and it managed,

but it was slow, and the station tanks were nowhere near capable of turning two

large-cap ships in the same week—it took time for Thule's three skimmers and the

mass-driver to bring in a ship-tank load of ice.

If that ship was priority and if it was Alliance, then it was something

recommissioned, something Mallory herself might have sent, if it was telling the

truth and it wasn't just talking itself into dock to blow them all to hell.

And if it was official, and if it was sitting there for the five days it was

likely to take drinking Thule's tanks down to the dregs, there was no way in

hell a freighter like Mary Gold was going to get into that single useable berth

and out again for another week.

Or two or three.

Information trickled out of Station Central. Central got a vid image. "God," Nan

said when that came up, and Bet just sat there with her arms crossed on a

nervous stomach.

Small crew-quarters, a bare, lean spine, and an engine-pack larger than need be.

"What in hell?" Bet said, to a handful of nervous civ stationers, and put a foot

on the floor suddenly. "Damn, what class is that thing?"

Ely was out of his office again, coming out to look at the vid in this room,

which showed the same thing as the vid in the office. People tended to cluster

when they thought they might be blown away.

"Oh, God, oh, God," one of the clients kept saying.

Bet got up while the comflow ran on the audio, business-as-ordinary, with an

apparent warship coming in to dock.

"Bet," Nan said. "What is it?"

"Dunno," she said. "Dunno." Her eyes desperately worked over the shadowy detail,

the midships area, the huge vanes. "She's some kind of re-fit."

"Whose?" a civ asked.

Bet shook her head. "Dunno that. It's a re-fit, could be anything."

"Whose side?" someone asked.

"Could be anything," she said again. "Never seen her. Never see ships in deep

space. Just hear them. Just talk to 'em in the dark." She hugged her arms around

herself and made herself calm down and sit down on the table edge, thinking that

there was in fact no telling. It was whatever it wanted to be. Spook was a

breed, not a loyalty.

But there was no likelihood it was going to open fire and blow the station. Not

if it wanted those tanks filled. Not if its tanks were really that far down.

Either it was hauling mass that didn't show or it'd been a long, long run out

there.

The comflow kept up. The stationer-folk huddled in front of the vid, remembering

whatever stationers remembered, who'd been through too much hell, too many

shifts, too much war.

Not fools. Not cowards. Just people who'd been targets once too often, on

stations that had no defense at all.

Bet kept her arms clenched, her heart beating in a panic of her own that had

nothing to do with stationer reasons.

CHAPTER 5

« ^ »

It took time to get anything into dock at Thule—minimum assists, a small

station. The process dragged on, a long series of arcane, quiet communications

between the incomer and Station Central, long silences while the station

computers and the incomer's talked and sorted things out. That was normal. That

relieved the stationers of their worst fears, seeing that the incomer was

actually coming in instead of shooting.

So things moved out on the docks, people began to separate themselves a little

from available vids: Bet went out for her lunch, down to the vending machines by

the lifts.

She got looks from the office types—as if suddenly anybody who looked like a

spacer was significant, whether or not she could possibly come from that ship.

She ignored the looks, got her chips and her sandwich and her soda, tucked the

chips into her pocket and walked out on Thule's little number one dock, where a

cluster of lights blazed white on the gantry, spotting the area where

dockworkers went about their prep, Thule's usual muddled, seldom-flexed system

of operations.

She gave a disgusted twitch of her shoulders, looked at that port, swallowed

bites of sandwich and washed them down with soda.

Damn, that ship was a problem, it was a major Problem, it bid fair to cost her

neck. It was probably Alliance, all right, her luck had been like that for two

years, but her heart was beating faster, her blood was moving in a way it hadn't

in a long time. Damn thing could kill her. Damn thing could be the reason the

law finally hauled her in and went over her and got her held for Mallory, but it

was like she could stand here, and part of her was already on the other side of

that wall, already with that ship—and if it killed her it still gave her that

feeling a while.

"Shit," she muttered, because it was a damnfool thing to feel, and it muddled up

her thinking, so that she could smell the smells and feel the slam of G when the

ship moved and hear the sounds again—

She swallowed down the sandwich, she looked at that dock and she was there, that

was all, and scared of dying and less scared, she wasn't sure why.

But she went back to Nan and stood by her desk with her back to the locals the

other side of the counter and said, "Nan, I got to try for this one."

"Bet, it's a rimrunner. We got a freighter coming in—it's going to be here. This

thing—"

Like she was talking to some drugger with a high in sight—

But: "I got to," she said. "I got to, Nan."

For reasons that made her a little crazy, for certain; but crazy enough to have

the nerve—like the Bet Yeager that Nan and Ely had been dealing with and the Bet

Yeager who was talking now were two different things, but she was sane enough to

go back to friends, sane enough to know she didn't want to alienate the only

help she had if things went sour.

"You turn 'em in my request?" Bet asked. "Nan?"

"Yeah," Nan said under her breath, looking truly worried over her, the way not

many ever had in her life.

So she left.

The dockside swarmed with activity, the dull machinery gleaming under the