Very well. Viking didn’t give a damn until the mess landed on its administrative desk. Viking certainly didn’t remember what lay forty years in the past as Viking kept time. Viking wasn’t going to call Corinthian and say there was a problem. Oh, no, Viking, like every other station, was busy looking for stray drugs or contraband biologicals.
And the fact that particular ship was on alterday schedule might give Sprite that much extra time to get into port before senior Corinthian staff realized they had a problem: their arrival insystem had to come to Corinthian off station feed, since a ship at dock relied on station for outside information—and how often did a ship sitting safe at dock check the traffic inbound?
Not bloody often. If ever. Though Corinthian might. Bet there was more than one ship that had Corinthian on its shit-list.
She owned a gun—illegal to carry it, at Viking or in any port. She kept it in her quarters under her personal lock. She’d gotten it years ago, in a port where they didn’t ask close questions. Paid cash, so the ship credit system never picked it up.
Mischa hadn’t figured it. Or hadn’t found where she kept it.
But it was more than Austin Bowe that she tracked, not just the whole of Corinthian that had aided and abetted what Bowe had done, and there was no more or less of guilt. Nobody got away with humiliating Marie Kirgov Hawkins. Nobody constrained her. Nobody forced her. Nobody gave her blind orders. She worked for Sprite because she was Hawkins, no other reason. Mischa was captain now, yes, because he’d trained for it, but primarily because the two seniors in the way had died—she was cargo chief not because she was senior, but because she was better at the job than Robert A. who’d been doing it, and better than four other uncles and aunts and cousins who’d moved out of the way when her decisions proved right and theirs proved expensively wrong. No face-saving, calling her assistant-anything: she was damned good, she didn’t take interference, and the seniors just moved over, one willingly, four not. The deposed seniors had formed themselves an in-ship corporation and traded, not too unprofitably, on their ship-shares, lining their apartments with creature-comforts and buying more space from juniors who wanted the credits more than they minded double-decking in their personal two-meter wide privacy. So they were gainfully occupied, vindicated at least in their comforts.
She, on the other hand, didn’t give a running damn for the luxuries she could have had. She’d had room enough in a senior officer’s quarters the couple of times she’d brought Tommy in (about as long as she could stand the juvenile train of logic), so she’d never asked for more space or more perks, and whether or not Mischa knew who really called the tune when it came to trade and choices, Sprite went where Marie Hawkins decided it was wise to go, Sprite traded where and what Marie Kirgov Hawkins decided to trade, took the contracts she arranged.
Mischa wouldn’t exactly see it that way, but then, Mischa hadn’t an inkling for the ten years he’d been senior captain exactly which were his ideas and which were hers. As cargo chief she laid two sets of numbers on his desk, one looking good and one looking less good, and of course he made his own choice.
Now Mischa was going to explain about Marie’s Problem to poor innocent Thomas, and enlist his help to keep Marie in line? Good luck. Poor Thomas might punch Mischa through the bulkhead if Mischa pushed him. Thomas had his genetic father’s temper and Thomas wasn’t subtle. Earnest. Incredibly earnest. And not a damn bad head on his shoulders, in the small interludes when testosterone wasn’t in the ascendant.
Predict that Mischa would want to deal with Tom, now, man to man, oh, right, when Mischa had ignored Tom’s existence when he was a kid, when Mischa had resisted tracking him into mainday crew until Saja pointed out they’d better put a kid with his talent and his brains under closer, expert supervision. Every time Mischa looked at Tom, Mischa saw Marie’s Problem; Mischa had a guilty conscience about younger sister’s Problem, and Mischa was patronizing as hell, Thomas hated being patronized, and Mischa hated sudden, violent reactions.