Rimrunners (7 page)

floods, crews working to complete the connections, in Thule's jury-rigged

accommodation for a modern starship. It wasn't a place for spectators. There

were few of them. Thule's inhabitants remembered sorties, remembered bodies

lying on the decking, shots lighting the smoke, and there were no idle

onlookers—just the crews who had work finally, and the usual customs agent, and

no more than that.

Excepting herself, who kept to the shadows of the girders, hands in pockets, and

watched things proceeding. She inhaled the icy, oil-scented air, watched the

pale gray monitor up on top of the pump control box ticking away the numbers,

and felt alive for a while.

The whole dock thundered to the sound of the grapples going out, hydraulics

screamed and squealed, the boom groaned, and finally the crash of contact

carried back down the arms, right through the deck plating and up into an

onlooker's bones.

Soft dock, considering the tiny size of the Thule docking cone and the tinsel

thinness of little Thule's outer wall: damn ticklish maneuver, another reason

the dock was generally vacant. There was the remote chance of a bump breaching

the wall. But there was equally well a chance of a pump blowing under the load

or God knew what else, a dozen ways to get blown to hell and gone anywhere on

Thule. Today it failed to matter. She thought that she could, perhaps, a major

perhaps, go the round of vending machines and buy up food enough and stash it

here and there in the crannies of Thule docks, maybe go to cover if somebody got

onto what was in Ritter-man's bedroom. She could just ignore this ship, wait it

out and hope to talk her way onto Mary Gold when and if she came. That was the

hole card she kept for herself, if Loki was what she was afraid it was.

But Mary Gold had become a small chance, a nothing chance with too many risks of

its own.

She waited, she waited two hours until little Thule got its seal problem

corrected and got Loki snugged in and safe. She stood there very glad of

Ritterman's castoffs under the jumpsuit, made as it had been for dockside chill:

breath still frosted and exposed skin went numb, and she kept her hands in her

pockets. Ice patched the corrugated decking, and the leaky seal that was

dripping water at the gantry-top was going to breed one helluva icicle in five

days' dock time.

Finally the tube went into place, the hatch whined and boomed open, letting out

a light touch of warmer, different air, a little pressure release; and of course

it was the customs man first up the ramp.

She found a place to sit in the vee of a girder, cold as it was, she sat and she

watched, and finally the customs man came out again.

She shivered, she felt—God, a sense of belonging to something again, just being

perched out here freezing her backside, like a dozen other sit-and-waits she

remembered. And it was damn foolish even to start thinking that way. It was

suicidal.

But she wasn't scared, not beyond a flutter in the gut which was her common

sense and the uncertainty of the situation; she wasn't scared, she was just

waiting to risk her neck, that was all, she thought about where she'd been and

where she could go, and it was all still remote from here.

She heard the inside lock open again, heard someone coming. Two of the crew this

time, in nondescript, not military. Her heart beat faster and faster as she

watched them meet with the dock-chief, all the slow talk that usually went on.

More crew came down. More nondescript, nothing like a uniform, no family

resemblance either. She worked cold hands, got up from her wedged-in perch

between the girders and shook the feeling back into her legs, then put her hands

in her pockets and walked up to the latest couple off the ramp.

"You!" a dockworker called out.

But she ignored that. She walked up, nodded a friendly hello—it was a man on

rejuv and a woman headed there, both in brown coveralls, nothing flashy. Work

stuff. " 'Day," she said. "Welcome in. I'm looking. Got any chance?"

Not particularly friendly faces. "No passengers," the man said.

She touched her pocket where the letter was. "Machinist. Stuck here. Who do I

talk to?"

A long slow look, from a cold, deeply creased face; from a hollow-cheeked female

face with a burn scar on the side.

"Talk to me," the man said. "Name's Fitch. First officer."

"Yes, sir." She took a breath and slipped her hands back into her pockets, a

twitch away from parade rest. Damn. Relax. Civ. Dammit. "Name's Yeager. Off

Ernestine. Junior-most and they had to trim crew. Others got hire, but it's been

slim for about six months."

"Not particularly hiring," Fitch said.

"I'm desperate." She kept a tight jaw, breathing shallow. "I'll take scut. I

don't ask a share."

A slow, analyzing stare, head to foot and back again—like he was figuring goods

and bads in what he was looking at.

"Dunno," Fitch said then, and hooked a quick gesture toward the ramp. "Talk to

the Man."

She was half-numb from standing in the airlock, in the kind of dry cold that

froze up any water vapor into a white rime on the surfaces and left the knees

locking up and refusing to work when she stepped over the threshold into Loki's

dim gut. The knees had gotten to the shaking stage when she got through into the

ring (there looked to be only one corridor) and did a drunken walk down the

narrow burn-deck. There was one light showing, one door standing open, besides

the hatches that were probably the downside stowage.

She reached it, saw the blond, smallish man at the desk. Plain brown jumpsuit.

The gimbaled floor made a knee-high step-up. She stood in the corridor and

called up, "Looking for the captain."

"You got him," the Man said, and looked down at her from the desk, so she

stepped up by the toehold in the rim of the deck and ducked to clear the door.

"Bet Yeager, sir." Fitch's name had gotten her inside. Now she was shivering,

her teeth trying to chatter, not entirely from the cold. "Machinist. Freighter

experience. Looking for a berth, sir."

"Any good?"

"Yes, sir."

A long silence. Pale eyes raked her over. A thin hand turned palm up.

She reached to her pocket and pulled out her papers, trying not to let her hand

shake when she put the folder in his hand.

He opened it, unfolded the paper, read it without expression, looked on the

back—everyone did, the last few signatures. And folded it again and gave it

back.

"We're not a freighter," he said.

"Yes, sir."

"But maybe you're not spacer."

"I am, sir."

"You know what we are?"

"I think I do, sir."

A long silence. Thin fingers turned the stylus over and over. "What rating?"

"Third, sir."

More silence. The stylus kept turning. "We don't pay standard. You get a hundred

a day on leave. Period. Board-call goes out ten hours before undock. My name's

Wolfe. Any questions?"

"No, sir."

"That's the right answer. Remember that. Anything else?"

"No, sir."

"See you, Yeager."

"Yes, sir," she said. And ducked her head and got out, off the deck, down the

corridor, out of the ship, still numb.

She thought about going to the Registry. She wanted a drink, she wanted to go

out on the docks with a little in her pocket and hit the bars and get a little

of the cold out of her bones, but she was a stranger to Loki crew and she could

not use Ritterman's card.

So she went back to the apartment and made herself a stiff one.

Loki was no freighter. The captain told that one right. She was still shaken,

the old nerves still answered. Loki wasn't a name she knew, but the name might

not have been Loki six months ago, or the same as that a year ago. The frame was

one of the old, old ones by the look of its guts, a small can-hauler with

oversized tanks where the cans ought to be, something naturally oversized in its

engine pack—tanks easy come by, easy to cobble on even for a half-assed shipyard

like Viking, which had built three such ships the Fleet knew about—ships to lie

out and lurk in the dark of various jump-points, to run again "with information.

Except the Line was shady, and the spooks went this side and that of it, and the

Fleet had trusted them no more than Union had: if you pulled into a point where

a spook was, you took it out and asked no questions.

So this particular spook was all official in the Alliance. The free-merchanters

had put themselves a boycott together, the merchanters had taken over Pell, and

now the spooks the stations had built to keep themselves informed came out in

the open, government papers and everything.

Damned right the captain wasn't going to quibble about her papers. When somebody

shiny bright and proper came in there looking for a berth, that was the time

Loki might ask real close questions.

She sipped Ritterman's whiskey. And tried not to think that, spook or not, it

was about as good as joining up with Mallory. She had to stop the little

twitches, like the one that said stand square, like the sir and the ma'am, like

the little orderly habits with her gear that said military—

So they were Mallory's spies, most probably—but not with Mallory, not too

legitimate, since spooks had regularly sold information to any bidder. And going

onto that ship was a case of hiding in plain sight. If she could learn the

moves, learn the accent, learn a spook's ways—then she could get along on a

spook ship, damn sure she could.

Dangerous. But in some ways less dangerous a hire than on some merchanter on the

up and up, with a crew that expected a merchanter brat to know a lot of things,

things about posts she'd never touched, especially about cargo regs and station

law, things that never had been her business.

She had stood real close to Africa's Old Man once or twice. A couple of thousand

troops in Africa's gut, and Porey rarely put his nose down there, except he went

with them when they went out onto some other deck, Porey was always right in the

middle of it; and being close to him that couple of times—she'd gotten the force

of him, gotten right fast the idea why he was the Old Man, and why everybody

jumped when Porey said move. Porey was the damn-coldest man she had ever stood

next to; and maybe it was only how desperate she was and how Loki was the hope

she'd thrown double or nothing on, but this Wolfe, the way he moved, the way he

talked—said competent, said no-nonsense, said he was a real bastard and you

didn't get any room with him. And that touched old nerves. She knew exactly

where she was with him, cut your throat for a bet, but show him you were good

and you just might do all right with a captain like that.

Spook captain. That Fitch, that Fitch was no easy man, either. That woman with

him you didn't push. That told you something about the captain too.

She poured herself another glass. Maybe, she thought, she was crazy. She wasn't

sure whether she ought not just drop out of sight now until the board-call rang,

stay mostly in the apartment, not go back to the Registry at all—except she

wanted to keep that card of Ritterman's active and she didn't want any chance of

getting an inquiry going into Ritterman's inactivity.

Five days, at least, for Loki's tanks to fill. Maybe closer to four till

boarding, counting the ten hour boarding-call. If she could just keep things

quiet that long, do the daily run to the vending machines, back to the

apartment, and stay put, then everything would work out.

All she had to do was stick it out and check the comp for things like overdue

tapes, things that could require Ritterman's intervention.

Meanwhile she got out Ritterman's collection of fiches and started sorting. That

kind of trade goods was low-mass, it would pack real easy, Thule customs only

worried about guns and power-packs and knives and razor-wire and explosives,

that kind of thing, it had no duty on anything, and there were no regs on Thule

about liquor.

She started packing, at least the sorting part.

She bedded down, the way she had been doing, on Ritterman's couch, she watched a

vid, she drank herself stupid and she woke up with a headache and the absolutely

true memory that she had a berth.

Best damn night she'd had in half a year.

CHAPTER 6

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She made the morning trip to the vending machines, she lived off chips and soda

and cheese sandwiches she heated and added Ritterman's pickles and sauce to.

That was the second day down. She stayed in the apartment otherwise and she went

through everything in the cluttered front rooms, to see what was worth leaving

with.

She checked the comp, she drank, she had another cheese sandwich for supper, she

looked at skuz pictures and she made a hook and fixed up the one of Ritterman's

useable sweaters that was really snagged—like ship, a lot. You tinkered with

stuff, you mended, you washed, you did the drill, you scrubbed anything that

didn't fight back, but hell if she was going to give Ritterman a good rep by

cleaning up this pit: she just kicked his stuff out of her way and washed what