Rimrunners (31 page)

Except she'd all along discounted Wolfe.

Damn dumb, Yeager, damn dumb. So who do they think you're working for if you

aren't Mallory's?

Effin' obvious, Yeager.

"You lied to me," Wolfe said.

"Nossir. Everything the way I said. Crew slot is all I wanted, it's all I want

right now."

Long silence. Wolfe never had any expression. She stood there, just went away a

little inside, figured past a certain point they were going to do whatever they

wanted to do and if command had made up their minds to freight her off to Pell

and Mallory or space her inside the hour, there was damn-all she could do about

it.

But this man could. Could help her, if he would, if what happened in the 'decks

ever concerned him at all, if he didn't just leave crew to suffer Fitch and

Orsini's private war and their maneuvering for power—

There were ships like that, in the Fleet.

"When did you leave your ship?"

"Pell, sir. When the Fleet pulled away. I was on dockside." She added,

uninvited, hammering away at what she wasn't sure Wolfe had heard the first and

the second time: "Not my ship now, sir. This is."

She wasn't sure Wolfe wasn't outright crazy. She wasn't sure she ought to take

one course or the other with him. Or maybe nobody was loyal to this ship, and

Wolfe just didn't figure her. He had that kind of look, just the least doubt in

that cold, ice-blue stare.

Maybe he would just throw her back to Fitch and Orsini and let them fight it

out.

What in hell does Wolfe do on this ship? she had asked Musa. And Musa,

uncomfortable in the question: He ain't a real activist…

Man had to be aware too, that he wasn't totally safe, if she wanted to commit

suicide and take him with her.

But he sat there. He rocked back in his chair and looked at her a long time and

said, "What's the last contact you had with the Fleet?"

That was the question. That was the big one. "Last was my com breaking up. On

Pell. Nothing since." She could see him saying to Fitch: Find out what she

knows. She said, quietly: "Decks never knew anything, no more than here, sir."

Long, long silence, Wolfe just sitting there.

"Master sergeant, was it?"

"Yessir."

"Mechanic?"

"On my own rig, sir. Some of us were."

"Tactical."

"Tac-squad, sir."

"Where before that?"

"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

questions… 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's running-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 mass…

"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 Africa too."

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 Loki for 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!"

"Bet…"

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."

CHAPTER 22

« ^ »

What happened?" was a question she got too damned often in the shower-line and

at breakfast, everybody from McKenzie to Masad out of Cargo, people coming up to

her, and then putting their heads together to whisper the business elsewhere.

The first time she was caught a little off-balance, and hesitated, and said,

"The captain asked into it," as if it was the Fitch business, which was a damn

lie, at bottom, and she wished she'd never been so stupid—like a challenge to

Fitch, and using Wolfe's name for a weapon. It might get back to Fitch. It might

make him think twice. It might also make him talk to the captain about it, and

that wasn't the outcome she wanted, damn sure.

So she wished she could take that back. She changed it as far as she could the

next time she was asked—said, "Captain wanted to ask me some questions, said

keep my mouth shut."

Damn stupid, Yeager. That mouth's going to kill you someday.

She ate her breakfast with her mates, and they were worrying about Fitch, they

were thinking about Wolfe and trying to reckon whether Wolfe was going to come

down on her side, that was all they understood about it.

"I'd be gone," NG had said quietly, in the dark, before the little sleep she had

gotten, "except for Wolfe. I don't know why. Favor to Bernie, I guess. I don't

understand it."

Most she'd ever gotten out of NG on that topic, that dozen or so words.

And when she thought about it this morning, she thought Fitch had to be worried

right now, damn worried, and that she ought to be happy about that situation,

ought to thank God Wolfe had stepped in, and ought to be a whole lot more

cheerful than she was.

Except Fitch just meant to kill her. Wolfe seemed to have decided something last

night, Wolfe had let her go, Wolfe had written her down as a liability or an

asset, she didn't know which.

In either case—expendable.

Hell, she thought, sipping her morning tea, tail back in the fire. What's

different than it ever was?

She had that answered until she saw NG looking at people this morning, looking

around him, looking at her and Musa and paying attention to human beings the way

he could those damn boards, saner this morning than she'd ever seen him.

He'd gotten drunk with friends last night, people had cared enough to sit on him

and knock him stupid to save him, and she'd gotten back safe, God in the person

of Wolfe had intervened to stop Fitch from killing her, and maybe things weren't

going to be the hell they'd been for three years.

Yeah.

Nothing could hurt him before this. Not even Fitch. He wasn't sane enough to

hurt, when I came aboard, and look at all I've done for him. Helped him no end,

haven't I?

Man'd have died for me last night, all he could've done, but he'd have done it.

Maybe he's got some crazy notion my trouble is his fault. Maybe he thinks he's

responsible for me, the same as for Cassel.

If he ever was responsible for Cassel.

Can't prove it, can't ever prove it, can't even do that much for him.

And what when he learns what he's been sleeping with!

Dealing with NG in a social situation was like handling a live grenade—you

really had to pay attention, all the time, to the little things—like how he'd