TriPoint, a Union Alliance novel by Caroline J. Cherryh

Somebody put his head out of ops and ducked back again. Fast.

He hit the wall four more times, until his knuckles showed blood.

Nobody asked. Nobody came out. He got as far as the next traverse, with the mess-hall in sight, when the siren sounded, and the PA thundered, “Take-hold, take-hold, long bum in one minute. This is your warning. “

He didn’t run. He walked, deliberately, counting the seconds, down the mess-hall center aisle, made it to the comfortable side, the stern wall, this time, where Tink and Jamal were getting set.

“Fix it?” Tink asked.

“Waste of time. Waste of effort. Nobody listens.”

Tink raised his brows. He remembered he was supposed to be seeing about bed-sheets. “Yeah,” Tink said, and held out a bag of candy. “Lot of that going around today. Have one. Have two.”

He did. His hand was skinned. He figured the knuckles would turn black. He ate the chocolate. Jamal had one, the three of them alone in a galley redolent of spices and, rare, expensive treat, bread baking.

The burn started, smooth, clean, steady, this time.

Mainday crew was the heavy load for the galley, the dockers, who seemed to keep whatever schedule they fancied—but figure that the horde would hit the galley hall for supper once the burn cut out. Sandwiches out to the working stations. Everybody to feed before they made jump.

Gentle burn. Reasonable burn.

“Easy does it now,” Tink said. “Pell is the most reg-u-lated place in the ports we do. You sneeze and gain a tenth of a k in their zones, you got a fine. One k ain’t nothing. Pilot knows.”

“Runs in the genes,” he muttered, while that ‘ports we do’ hit the conscious part of his brain, the assumptions he’d made, the questions he’d asked himself and not asked, because the routes were so laid down by physics and what points a ship could reach from where they were that he’d assumed Earth, Tripoint, and Viking. From Pell, they could make Earth, spooky enough thought, strange, overcrowded place. But that had been where Christophe Martin was bound. Christian wouldn’t ship him where Corinthian was already going. From Pell… if they went really off the charts they could reach the Hinder Stars, the old bridge of stars the sub-lighters had used for stepping-stones out from Earth—shut down, now, dead,

… civilized powers couldn’t keep the Mazianni out of them, and the Military had dismantled the stations.

So they said.

“Tink. “ He felt stupid asking, at this late date. “Where are we going?”

“Tripoint. Just Tripoint to Viking.”

So mundane it shook him, after the giddy speculation he’d just made. He wasn’t even sure he’d have believed it, if it hadn’t come from Tink.

“Where’s the Fleet connection?” he asked. It was just the three of them in the galley, Tink, Jamal, himself.

And a silence.

Then: “Tripoint,” Tink said. That was all. The silence outweighed curiosity, reminding him Tink wasn’t innocent. Saby wasn’t. Nobody on this ship was. Now he wasn’t, because he’d voluntarily come back aboard.

He’d been in a position, while he was free, to do everything Marie would have done—whatever it might have cost him. But he hadn’t. Hadn’t wanted to—thinking about himself. Then Tink. Then Saby, after which… he guessed now he was where he wanted to be, scared, lost—queasy at the stomach as the burn kept up, getting them up to the v Pell would let them carry in its inner zones.

And very, very lonely, just now. Cut off from everything and everyone he’d grown up with. From everything he’d been taught was right and wrong, good and bad.

Burn cut out.

“That’s about 10 kips,” Tink said. “Out and away from Downbelow’s pull. We’re outbound now.”

“How long have we got? Days? Hours?”

“Four hours inside the slow zones,” Jamal said. “Two meals to two shifts, fast as we can turn ‘em, and all the resupply at the posts. You make coffee?”

“I can learn. “ He stood away from the wall, steady on his feet. Movement was starting down the corridor, a drift of mainday crew past the tables… “Serving line’s not open yet,”

Jamal yelled out, which roused no complaint, but faces were grim-Ship, he heard. People weren’t happy, and it didn’t have to do with the line not being open. While Jamal and Tink hauled the serving-pans out and settled them on the counter, he opened up the cabinet and got out the coffee and the filters, listening all the while.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162

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