Cherryh, CJ – Merchanters Luck

himself, in the strange quiet of the moment. He’s got sense.

He turned a look to the screens. The com light was flashing.

“Belt in,” he said to Curran. “They’re coming on.”

There was the muted noise and shock of lockto. Allison lay still in the light G

of their concealment, in absolute dark, felt Deirdre move slightly, a touch

against her suit, and Neill was back there behind Deirdre. Her fingers rested on

the butt of one of the ship’s three guns—they had gotten that from the locker…

taken two and left one, in the reckoning that any boarders might suspect a

completely empty weapons locker. Likewise the suits: two were left hanging. They

must have done something about the cabins topside, she reckoned; they must have.

A second crash that resounded close at hand: and that was the lock working.

Allison shivered, an adrenalin flutter that made her leg jerk; Deirdre could

feel it, likely, which sent a rush of shame after it. It would not stop. She

wanted to do something; and on the other hand she was cowardly, glad to be where

she was.

And Curran and Stevens up there—Sandor. Kreja. She chased the name through her

mind, and it meant nothing to her, nothing she had known. Curran and Sandor.

They thought they were going to die. Both of them. And she had followed orders

because she was blank of ideas, out of her depth. Like hiding in her cabin while

her unit tried to settle things with the man who had title to the ship. Like not

knowing answers, and taking too much advice. She had a new perspective on

herself, hiding, shivering in the dark while she threw a cousin and a man she

had slept over with to the Mazianni, men who would keep their mouths shut and

protect them down here—

Not for the ship, not for the several million lousy credit ship, but for what a

ship was, and the lives it still contained, down here in the dark.

Another sound, eventually, the passage of someone through the corridors, not far

away, sound carried clear enough into the pressurized service shafts, into her

amplified pickup. They could come out behind the invaders, maybe cut them down

with their pathetic two handguns if surprise was on their side—But a thousand

troops to follow—what could they do but get themselves hauled down by the

survivors?

She added it up, the logic of it, a third and fourth time, and every time

Stevens/Sandor came out right. He knew exactly what he was doing. And had always

known that she did not. She lay there, breathing the biting cold air that passed

through her suit’s filters, with a discomfort she did not dare stir about to

relieve, and added up the sum of Allison Reilly, which was mostly minuses— No

substance at all, no guts; and it was no moment to try to prove something. Too

late for proofs. She had to lie here and take orders and do something right.

Grow up, she told herself. Think. And save everything you can.

They were topside now, the invaders. Suddenly she began thinking with peculiar

clarity—what they would have done, leaving some behind to secure the passage

between the ship, some to guard the lift. Going out there would mean a firefight

and three dead Dubliners.

That did no good. She started thinking down other tracks. Like saving Lucy,

which was for starters on a debt, and hoping that the most epic liar she had

ever met could con the Mazianni themselves.

He had a fine survival sense, did Stevens/Kreja. Supposing the Mazianni left him

and Curran in one piece-Supposing that, they might need help. Fast.

Her foot started going to sleep. The numbness spread up her leg, afflicted the

arm she was lying on. Holding her head up was impossible, and she let it down

against the surface of the shaft, found a way to accommodate her neck by resting

her temple just so against the helmet padding. Small discomforts added up,

absorbed her attention with insignificant torments. The air that came through

the filters was cold enough to sting her nose, her face, her eyes when she had

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