It made some half sense. Easy to say. Unprovable, that they’d had any altruism in their trade. Unprovable, that they’d not sold out other ships at the going rate. Everybody said so. He didn’t see anything to convince him otherwise.
“I wanted,” Austin said after a moment, and quietly, “myself, to find a post in the Fleet. That was my ambition. But that year, ships were dying. Africa and Australia had turned to raiding commerce. Momentum was shifting to the other side. I hated Union. I still hate Union. But that was the year I saw the handwriting on the proverbial wall, and, yeah, immortality figured in it. Wanting to leave something. Didn’t know the kid was a first-timer, those weren’t the signals she gave off, or I wouldn’t have asked her to my room. She was drunk, I wasn’t sober, first thing I knew she hit me in the face, bashed me with a glass, I was bleeding, she got to the phone, and the station went to hell in five minutes. End of story.”
“You didn’t need to beat her up.”
“See this scar?” Austin’s finger rested on his temple. “I was bleeding worse than she was, your captain wasn’t returning calls, they had the station authorities in it, my crew was trying to keep me out of station hands… yeah, some heads got cracked, three captains and three crews were at each others’ throats—and, yeah, I was mad, I got mine, as time hung heavy on my hands, and since she’d told them it was rape, hell, I figured why not give her something to bitch about. I didn’t hurt her—”
“The hell!”
“Physically. Let’s talk about whose career was on the line, whose damn life was on the line, with Ms. Modesty screaming rape. I’ll ask you who got screwed in that room, thanks.”
“You could have walked out of there.”
“Damn right I could, right into the hands of the station police.”
“My heart aches.”
“I was eighteen. I was nihilistic. My career was shot to hell, civilization was going down with it, nothing I did was going to last. Surprise, of course. Marie of course informed me when she got the chance—we have something in common, she said. And we do, matter of fact. Tenacious. Still mad. Hell, I don’t cry foul. I respect the woman. Somebody did that to me, I’d track the bastard down, damn right. I wouldn’t forget.”
He could all but hear his heartbeat, under what Austin was saying. Could see his own life and his prospects in Austin’s attitude, and Marie’s.
“No forgiveness,” he said, “anywhere in the equation. No regrets.”
Austin shrugged. “I regret it’s involved three crews who didn’t ask for it. I regret my father put me in sickbay when he got his hands on me. Broke my arm, my collarbone, and three ribs. I am a patient man, you understand. He wasn’t, the son of a bitch. But he ran a rough crew.”
Austin, bidding for sympathy? Telling him he’d had it rough? Enough to turn a stomach. He wanted Austin to get up and hit him. Threaten him, do something else but bid for understanding. He wanted to hit Austin so badly he ached with it… but that wasn’t the role he’d come to want, in this room, one more clenched fist, one more act of force that didn’t do anything, didn’t prove anything, except to a mentality that understood the fist and not a damn thing else.
He gave it a second thought, in that light. Maybe it would get him points. Maybe it was all Austin Bowe did understand. But he didn’t hear that in the con job Austin was pulling, he didn’t see it in the sometimes earnest look on the man’s face… there was more to Austin Bowe than that, and hell if he’d give him a fight Austin had calculated to win.
“We all have hard lives,” he said, Marie’s coldest sentiment, and got up to walk out. “No, I don’t want to bunk with Saby. She’s got her own problems. I’ve got mine. Galley’s just fine. Brig’s all right. I like the door locked.”
He thought Austin might pull the you’re-not-dismissed shit on him. Might get up and knock him sideways, or lock the door.