Company Wars 01 – Downbelow Station

His heart came close to stopping. He shook his head calmly. “I don’t know what

you’re talking about, Captain Mazian. If you’d be so good as to tell me the

source of your information—”

Mazian gestured and someone entered the room. Jon looked and saw Bran Hale, who

evaded his eyes.

“Do you know each other?” Mazian asked.

“This man,” Jon said, “was discharged on Downbelow for mismanagement and mutiny.

I considered a previous record and hired him. I’m afraid my confidence may have

been misplaced.”

“Mr. Hale approached Africa with some thought of enlistment… claimed to have

certain information. But you flatly deny knowing a man named Jessad.”

“Let Mr. Hale speak for his own acquaintances. This is a fabrication.”

“And one Kressich, councillor of Q?”

“Mr. Kressich was, as I explained, in the control center.”

“So was this Jessad.”

“He might have been one of Kressich’s guards. I didn’t ask their names.”

“Mr. Hale?”

Bran Hale put on a grim face. “I stand by my story, sir.”

Mazian nodded slowly, carefully drew his pistol. Jon thrust back from the table,

and the men behind him slammed him back into the chair. He stared at the pistol,

paralyzed.

“Where is Jessad? How did you make contact with him? Where would he have gone?”

“This fiction of Hale’s—”

The safety went off the pistol audibly.

“I was threatened,” Jon breathed. “Threatened into cooperation. They’ve seized a

member of my family.”

“So you gave them your son.”

“I had no choice.”

“Hale,” Mazian said, “you and your companions and Mr. Lukas may go into the next

compartment. And we’ll record the proceedings. We’ll let you and Mr. Lukas

settle your argument in private, and when you’ve resolved it, bring him back

again.”

“No,” Jon said. “No. I’ll give you the information, all that I know.”

Mazian waved his hand in dismissal, Jon tried to hold to the table. The men

behind him hauled him to his feet. He resisted, but they brought him along, out

the door, into the corridor. Hale’s whole crew was out there.

“They’ll serve you as well,” Jon shouted back into the room where the officers

of Europe still sat. “Take him in and he’ll serve you the same way. He’s lying!”

Hale grasped his arm, propelled him into the room which waited for them. The

others crowded after. The door closed.

“You’re crazy,” Jon said. “You’re crazy, Hale.”

“You’ve lost,” Hale said.

iii

Merchanter Finity’s End: deep space; 2200 hrs. md; 1000 hrs. a.

The wink of lights, the noise of ventilators, the sometime sputter of com from

other ships—all of this had a dreamlike familiarity, as if Pell had never

existed, as if it were Estelle again and the folk about her might turn and show

familiar faces, known from childhood. Elene worked her way through the busy

control center of Finity’s End and pressed herself into the nook of an

overhanging console to obtain a view of scan. Her senses were still muzzy with

drugs. She pressed her hand to her belly, feeling unaccustomed nausea. Jump had

not hurt the child… would not. Merchanters had proven that time and again,

merchanter women with strong constitutions and lifelong habituation to the

stresses; it was nine-tenths nerves, and the drugs were not that heavy. She

would not lose it, would not even think of it. In time her pulse settled again

from the short walk from main room, the waves of sickness receded. She watched

scan acquire another blip. Merchanters were coming into the null point by drift,

the way they had left Pell, frantically gathering all the realspace speed they

could on entry to keep ahead of the incomers who were rolling in like a tide on

a beach. All it needed was someone overshooting minimum, some over hasty ass

coming into realspace too close to the point, and they and the newcomer would

cease to exist in any rational sense, shredded here and there. She had always

thought it a peculiarly nasty fate. They would ride for the next few minutes

still with that end a very real possibility.

But they were coming in greater and greater numbers now, finding their way into

this refuge in reasonable order. They might have lost a few passing through the

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