STARLINER by David Drake

He locked his eyes with Ran’s again, and his voice rasped like the tongue of a lion. “What I’m sure of is. That as a result of Nevasa. Everybody in the galaxy knows or will know. That if you hijack a Terran ship, your planet will be gutted. And the government of Federated Earth will smile and go its wholly deniable way.”

“Oh, God, Hiram,” Ran said softly as he kneaded his brows with his fingertips. “And Grantholm goes on, and . . . ?”

“Nobody picked Nevasa City,” Kneale said. “The Nevasans picked it, and—if the crash wasn’t an autopilot error—it would have been Sonderburg except for what you managed to do. But there won’t be a next time. That’s what makes it worthwhile.”

Ran shivered. “I . . .” he said. His lips quirked in a smile. “There isn’t really anything to say, is there? It’s done. I guess I’ll go now.”

“Sometimes quick ruthlessness is the gentlest course in the long run,” Kneale said. His voice fell into a whisper. “Governments have to think about the long run.”

Ran reached for the latch plate. As he did so, his eyes strayed to the left, toward the image of children playing on the outskirts of Nevasa City.

* * *

“Want a drink?” Ran asked.

Wanda was drawing figure-8 patterns with her index finger across the face of the autobar at their table. “Not here,” she said.

They were alone in the starliner’s Darwin Lounge. On the walls, cartoon figures capered through skits illustrating evolution: the evolution of drinks, from rancid grape juice to the incredibly-complex cocktails in which the lounge’s autobar specialized; the evolution of transport, from log float to the Empress of Earth herself; the evolution of living spaces, from cave to the Darwin Lounge. . . .

The scenes were so funny, and so obviously non-serious, that “nobody could take offense at them”; though of course people did, several on every voyage, for reasons as diverse as they were uniformly absurd. For that matter, passengers had been known to complain about the rest rooms off the Social Hall, because the crossing patterns of the plaid decorative scheme “suggested Christian motives.”

A pair of stewards entered the lounge, noticed the two officers, and lowered their voices as they walked on through to the Carthage Salon beyond.

“What I’d like to do,” Wanda resumed, looking across at Ran and smiling fixedly, “seeing that we’ll be laid over on Tblisi for an extra forty-eight hours so the home office can decide how to modify our schedule . . . .”

She took a deep breath. “Is for us to rent one of the fishing cottages out at the head of Bluewater Bay. And spend the next while getting to know each other better.”

Wanda forced her smile broader. The tip of her index finger was white from the force with which she pressed at the autobar. “Is that clear enough for you, Ran?” she said.

He spread his right hand flat on the table and pushed. “Didn’t you hear what I said?” he demanded, “They deliberately crashed—”

“Listen to me!” Wanda said as she covered his hand with her own. “I was there when they were installing the autopilot in the commander’s cabin, remember? When we watched the Brasil—you didn’t have to tell me what was going on, Ran.”

Ran shuddered. He wouldn’t meet her eyes, but he turned his hand palm-up to clasp Wanda’s. “And it doesn’t matter?” he asked.

“It’s done,” she said. “Whether it was a good idea or a bad one . . . and yeah, I think it probably was a good idea, the same as the commander does and you do. I’m just glad that it wasn’t me who had to—do what was done.”

She clasped Ran’s hand between both of hers. “Look at me, Ran,” she whispered.

He obeyed, giving her a wan smile. “I dunno, Ms. Lieutenant Holly,” he said. “I’m not sure I’m tough enough for this business.”

Wanda laughed. “You’re tough enough for anything you have to do,” she said. “I’m paraphrasing somebody I trust on that. But our job is to get the Empress in on schedule, with happy passengers. Not to worry about—other people’s jobs, that they’ve already done and we can’t undo if we wanted to.”

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