TriPoint, a Union Alliance novel by Caroline J. Cherryh

Because Marie was the edges of the universe. Marie was right and wrong. Marie was the place to go to for the answers and he didn’t have a map without her.

Lydia’d say that wasn’t normal either. But it was all he had. And nobody else was going to get him out of this. Nobody else gave a damn.

Lydia didn’t. Lydia said he was a misfit and a time bomb on the ship. Lydia’d said he’d go off the edge someday, and they ought to find him a nice safe berth on a station, where he could get adopted.

He had nightmares about Lydia finding ways to leave him. Like Lydia convincing Mischa, who didn’t like him anyway. And when Marie would send him back to the nursery because she was sick of him, and when the nursery would complain that he was too old, he hurt the younger kids and he wouldn’t take their sleep cycle, because all the other kids and all the mothers except Marie were on mainday…

And the nursery workers all wanted to watch vids while the kids were asleep, but they wouldn’t let him watch the ones they did, they said go to bed, go to sleep, if he just behaved himself Marie might take him back…

The siren sounded again. Warning of jump imminent.

“Count is five… four… “

He squeezed the pack. Felt the sting of the needle.

“… three… two… “

Marie wasn’t coming, wasn’t ever coming to get him, where he was going.

—iii—

THE WAVEFRONT OF CORINTHIAN’S passage was still coming at them when the clock on Sprite’s bridge said to anybody who knew anything that Corinthian had just left the system.

That information hit Marie in the gut—for God knew what reason, because, dammit, she didn’t owe the kid. It was the other way around. Highly, the other way around. She’d searched up and down the frontage where she’d left him, she’d gone back to Sprite to pursue matters as far as she dared with the police, almost to the point of getting swept up and detained herself. It hadn’t been a good experience, and meanwhile Sprite crew wholesale was still out searching every nook in every bar and shop they could think of for a damned elusive twenty-three-year-old offspring who ought occasionally to read the schedule boards.

Miller Transship claimed to know nothing. The station police called station Central, and Central called the stationmaster, who called Corinthian long-distance, himself, big deal, while Corinthian was outbound.

Surprise: Corinthian denied all knowledge of Hawkins personnel aboard.

Then Corinthian said, which they needn’t have said… that if they should turn out to have a stowaway, they’d drop him at their next port.

The stationmaster said, all mealy-mouthed, Do that, and signed off.

Injustice… there wasn’t a choice about it. There wasn’t a ship in hell or Viking system that could chase that bastard down once they’d finally roused the stationmaster with word something could be wrong… even Sprite, mostly empty. Couldn’t, with the head start he’d have had, and their tanks still drawing… and for a station to call an outbound ship to dump v and limp back the long slow days it would take to reach station from where they were, plus buck the outbound traffic, against all regulation… meant big lawsuits if station couldn’t prove their case; and catch-me-if-you-can if the merchanter in question wanted to claim they were in progress for jump and missed the transmission. By the time they got back again, witnesses had scattered and it was, again, better have good evidence and a good reason.

So they had to watch the son of a bitch become a blip on station scopes.

And that last, that unnecessary bit of information about stowaways, was a clear message from Bowe, damn his smug face—she knew. They could just as well pull in the search teams, Tom was on that ship, Bowe had taken away the only thing she had of his, and the remark about dropping Tom ‘at their next port’ was a threat, not a reassurance. God knew what their ‘next port’ was, if it wasn’t some Mazianni carrier in want of personnel.

If there’d just been proof to give the police, if there’d been any concrete evidence of a kidnapping…

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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