because he would need that too, much as he dreaded it.
A second trip, rightward, this time, past sealed cabins, into the narrow
confines of the galley and galley storage. He filled water bottles, and took an
armful of them back to the bridge, jammed them into the brace he had long ago
rigged near the command console… scared, if he let himself think about it. He
swallowed such feelings, bobbed his head up now and again to check scan, down
again to open up the underdeck storage where he had shoved some of the dried
goods, not to have to suit up for the chill of the holds to hunt for them. He
knelt there counting the packets out, taped them where he could get at them from
the chair. His braced limbs shook from the strain of G. He dropped a packet and
lunged after it, taped it where it belonged.
The lane still showed clear. He crawled up and held onto the back of the
cushion, staring at the instruments, finally edged his way back to one of the
brown plastic bunks at the aft bulkhead, to give his back a little relief from
the strain. His eyes stung with fatigue. He rested his hands beside him, arms
pulled askew by the spiral stress of acceleration, leaned his head against the
bulkhead, not really comfortable, but it was a change from the long-held
position in the cushion, and he could get the com or the controls from here if
he had to.
There were compartments all about the ring, private quarters. Diametrically
opposite the bridge was the loft, where the children had been… he never went
around the ring that far. This was home, this small space, these bunks aft of
the bridge, plastic mattresses patched with tape and deteriorating with age. One
had been his when he was ten, that over there, nearest lie partition spinward;
and there had been Papa Lou’s, which he never sat on; and one his mother’s; he
had had brothers and sisters and cousins once, and there had been three children
under six, cousins too. But Papa Lou had vented them and old Ma’am too, when
their boarders turned ugly and it was clear what they were going to do.
They had had Lucy’s armament, but that had been helpless against a carrier and
its riderships; they had had only two handguns on the ship… and the boarders who
had ambushed them in the nullpoint had said they were not touching crew, only
cargo. It had been Lucy’s clear choice then, open the hatch or be blown
entirely. But they lied, the Mazianni, pirates even then, in the years when they
had called themselves the Company Fleet and fought for Pell and Earth. They
respected nothing and counted life nothing, and into such hands Papa Lou had
surrendered them… not understanding.
He himself had not understood. He had not imagined. He had looked at the
armored, faceless invaders with a kind of awe, a child’s respect of such power.
He had—for that first few moments they had been aboard—wanted to be one of them,
wanted to carry weapons and to wear such sleek, frightening armor—one brief,
ugly temptation, until he had seen Papa Lou afraid, and begun to suspect that
something evil had come, something far less beautiful inside the armor, that had
gotten into the ship’s heart. He always felt guilt when he recalled that… that
he had admired, that he had wanted to frighten others and not be frightened—he
reasoned with himself that it was only the glitter that had drawn him, and that
any child would have reacted the same, in the confusion, in the shaking of
reliable references, in ignorance, if not in innocence. But he always felt
unclean.
Most of it had happened here, on the bridge, in the commonroom and the corridor,
in this widest part of the ship where they had gathered everyone but the
children, and where the boarders started showing what they meant to do. But Papa
Lou had gotten to the command chair and voided the part of the ship where the
children and the oldest had taken refuge, before they shot him; and most of them