Unwelcome thoughts occurred to her as she sat there, as they had been occurring
regularly since the Pell operations began to go sour. She looked up from time to
time, at Mazian, at Tom Edger’s thin, preoccupied face. Edger’s Australia
partnered with Europe more often than any other… an old, old team. Edger was
second in seniority as she was third; but there was a vast gulf between second
and third. Edger never spoke in council. Never had a thing to say. Edger did his
talking with Mazian in private, sharing counsels, the power at the side of the
throne, as it were; she had long suspected so. If there was any man in the room
who really knew Mazian’s mind, it was Edger.
The only station but Sol.
So they were three who knew, she reckoned glumly, and kept her mouth shut on it.
They had come a long way… from Company Fleet to this. It was going to be a vast
surprise to those Company bastards on Earth and Sol Station, having a war
brought to their doorstep… having Earth taken as Pell had been. And seven
carriers could do it, against a world which had given up starflight, which had,
like Pell, only short-haulers and a few in-system fighters at its command… with
Union coming in on their heels. It was a glass house, Earth. It could not fight…
and win.
She lost no sleep over it. Did not plan to. More and more she was convinced that
the whole Pell operation was busywork, that Mazian might be doing precisely what
she had advised all along, keeping the troops busy, keeping even his crews and
captains busy, while the real operation here was that on Downbelow and what he
proposed with the mines and short-haulers, the gathering of supplies, the
repairs, the sorting of station personnel for identification and capture of all
those fugitives who might surface and make takeover easy and cheap for Union.
Her job.
Only here there were no merchanters to be pressed into duty as transport, and no
carrier was going to let itself become a refugee ship. Could not. Had no room.
It was no wonder that Mazian was not talking, was refusing to say anything about
contingency plans which were, under numerous pretexts, already swinging into
operation. A scenario constructed itself: station comp blown, for they had all
the new comp keys; Downbelow base thrown into chaos by the elimination of the
one man who was holding it together and the execution of all those gathered
multitudes of humans and Downers so that Downers would never work for humans
again; the station itself thrown into descending orbit; and themselves running
for a jump point with a screen of short-haulers that could only serve as
navigation hazards. Jump for the Hinder Stars, and in quick succession, for Sol
itself—
While Union had to decide whether to save itself a stationful of people and a
base, and to battle the chaos on Downbelow which could starve the station out
even with rescue… or to let Pell die and go for a strike unencumbered, having no
base behind them closer than Viking… a vast, vast distance to Earth.
Bastard, she hailed Mazian privately, with a glance under her brows. It was
typical of Mazian that he worked moves ahead of the opposition and thought the
unthinkable. He was the best. He always had been. She smiled at him when he fed
them dry, precise orders about cataloging, and had the satisfaction of seeing
the great Mazian for a moment lose the thread of his thought. He recovered it,
went on, looked at her from time to time with perplexity and then with greater
warmth.
So now assuredly they were three who knew.
“I’ll be frank with you,” she said to the men and women who assembled kneeling
and standing in the lower deck suiting room, the only place on Norway she could
get most of the troops assembled with an unobstructed view, jammed shoulder to
shoulder as they were. “They’re not happy with us. Mazian himself isn’t happy
with the way I’ve run this ship. Seems none of you is on the List. Seems none of