probably kin of the merchanters on-station standing in those lines, but they’ll
not break formation to hail their own mothers, no. What the Fleet takes… doesn’t
come back. You don’t tell me anything I don’t know about the Fleet. I can tell
you that if we want to do something we should do it. Now.”
“If we bring him in with us, we risk having that act in Fleet files…”
“I think I know what you want to do.”
She had her own stubbornness. He reckoned matters, stopped at the lift, his hand
on the button. “I figure we’d better get him,” he said.
“So,” she said. “Thought so.”
Chapter Seven
« ^ »
i
Pell: sector white four: 2230 hrs.
Jon lukas walked nervously through the vacant halls, despite the pass Keu had
given to all of them in the council chambers. Troops might be withdrawn
progressively starting at maindawn, they had been promised. Had to, he reckoned.
Some of them were already being rotated off to rest, some Fleet crew, armorless,
taking up guard in their places. It was all quiet; he was not even challenged
but once, at the lift exit, and he walked to his door, used his card to open it.
The front room was deserted. His heart lurched with the immediate fear that his
unbidden guest had strayed; but then Bran Hale appeared in the hall by the
kitchen and looked relieved to see him.
“All right,” Hale said, and Jessad came out, and two others of Hale’s men after
him.
“About time,” Jessad said. “This was growing tedious.”
“It’s going to stay that way,” Jon said peevishly. “Everyone has to stay here
tonight: Hale, Daniels, Clay… I’m not having my apartment door pour a horde of
visitors out under the troops’ noses. They’ll be gone come morning.”
“The Fleet?” Hale asked.
“The troops in the halls.” Jon went to the kitchen bar, examined a bottle which
had been full when he left it and which now had two fingers remaining. He poured
himself a drink and sipped it with a sigh, his eyes stinging with exhaustion. He
walked over to the chair he favored and sank down as Jessad took his place
opposite, across the low table, and Hale and his men rummaged at the bar for
another bottle. “I’m glad you were prudent,” he said to Jessad. “I was worried.”
Jessad smiled, cat-eyed. “I surmise you were. That for a moment or two you
thought of solutions. Maybe you’re still thinking in that line. Shall we discuss
it?”
Jon frowned, slid a glance at Hale and his men. “I trust them more than you, and
that’s a fact.”
“It’s likely you thought of being rid of me,” Jessad said. “And I wouldn’t be
surprised if you aren’t right now more concerned about where rather than if. You
might get away with it entirely. Probably you would.”
The directness disturbed him. “Since you bring it up yourself, I suppose you’ve
got a counter proposal.”
The smile persisted. “One: I’m no present hazard; you may want to think matters
over. Two: I am undismayed by Mazian’s arrival.”
“Why?”
“Because that contingency is covered.”
Jon lifted the glass to his lips and took a stinging swallow. “By what?”
“When you jump to land in the Deep, Mr. Lukas, you can do it three safe ways:
not throw much into the jump in the first place… if you’re in regions you know
very, very well; or use a star’s G to pull you up; or—if you’re good—the mass in
some null point. A lot of junk in Pell’s vicinity, you know that? Nothing very
big, but big enough.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Union Fleet, Mr. Lukas. Do you think there’s no reason Mazian has his ships
grouped for the first time in decades? Pell’s all they have left; and the Union
Fleet is out there, just as they sent me ahead, knowing where they’d come.”
Hale and his men had gathered, settled on the couch and along the back of it.
Jon shaped the situation in his mind, Pell a battle zone, the worst of all
scenarios.
“And what happens to us when it’s discovered there’s no way to dislodge Mazian?”