Sometimes you got a reaction you didn’t want. His nerves still twitched to tones in Marie’s voice, nuances of Marie’s expression. Sometimes she’d strike out and you didn’t know why.
Not a good mother—although he liked Marie most of the time. Sometimes he admitted he loved her, or at least toyed with the idea that he did, because there was no one else. Gran was dead at Mariner. He didn’t remember her except as a blurry face, warm arms, a lap. Saja… Saja was solving a staff problem, by taking his side. And Mischa…
Well, there was Mischa.
—ii—
“How’s your mother taking the situation?” Mischa asked, leaning back, with the desk between them.
That was a trap, and a broad one. Mischa, monitor the lower corridor? Spy on his own crew and kin?
Maybe.
“I don’t know, sir. We did talk. She wanted to.”
“She did.” Mischa didn’t seem to believe that, just stared at him a beat or two. “I don’t know how much of the detail she ever gave you…”
Plenty. Much too much, and he didn’t want a rehash from Mischa, but he’d found out one and two things he’d not heard before in the last hour, just by listening, and he sensed a remote chance of more pieces.
He shrugged, nerved himself not to blow, and waited.
“We pulled into Mariner,” Mischa said. “Like now, Corinthian was at dock. Ten other ships. It was the middle of the War, stations were jittery, you didn’t know what side the ship next to you might be on. Corinthian was real suspect. Had a lot of money, crew throwing it around. The ship smelled all over like a Mazianni sellout, but you couldn’t prove it. We had a caution on them. And my sister—” Mischa rocked the chair, regarded him a moment, frowning. “Austin Bowe’s the devil, Granted. Marie was seventeen, sweet, happy kid—in those years nobody could know for sure who was running clean and who wasn’t. You stayed close to kin and you didn’t spill everything you knew in sleepovers with strangers. That was the atmosphere. And this was her first time cruising the docks, not sure she’s going to do it, you know, but looking. ‘Stay close to Family, ‘ mama said. ‘Stick with your cousins. ‘ Two ships in port, we knew real well. We—Saja and I—tried to set her up with a real nice guy off Madrigal. We arranged a meeting, we were going to meet some of their crew in a bar, but Marie ducked out on us. Wouldn’t go with us, no. We waited. We had a drink, we had two. Marie knew the name of the bar, she had her pocket-com, she didn’t answer a page, I was getting damn worried, I was stupid—Saja kept saying we should call in, I figured Marie was doing exactly what she did, she wouldn’t go with any guy her brother set up, oh, no, Marie was going to do things her way, and Heston—he was captain, then—was going to kill her, you know what I mean? I was covering for her. I figured she wasn’t too far away. Wrong, again. We started searching, bar to bar, quiet, not raising any alarm. Next thing I know I’ve got a call from the ship saying they’d had a call relayed through station com, clear around Manner rim, Marie’s in trouble in some sleepover she doesn’t know the name of, she’s crying and she’s scared.”
Marie didn’t cry. Never knew Marie to cry. He didn’t recognize the woman Mischa was telling him about. And he couldn’t fault Mischa on what Mischa said he’d done.
“What we later reconstructed,” Mischa said, “your mother’d hopped a ped transport that passed us. That was how she ducked out. She’d gone into blue sector—we were in green—pricier bunch of bars, not a bad choice for a kid looking for action, and here’s this complete stranger, tall, good-looking, mysterious, the whole romantic baggage… Corinthian junior officer gets her drunker than she ought to be, talks her into bed, and it gets kinkier and rougher than she knows how to cope with. She gets scared. Guy’s got the key—mistake number two. Mama—your gran—gets the com call. At which point I get the call, mama’s on her way over to blue with Heston, and they’ve called the cops. At least Marie had the presence of mind to know the guy was Corinthian, she could tell us that. So the cops called Corinthian, Corinthian probably called Bowe—but Bowe’s Corinthian’s senior captain’s kid, so you know Corinthian’s not just real eager to see him arrested, and in those days, stations weren’t just real eager to annoy any ship either. Supply was too short, they were scared of a boycott, the government wasn’t in control of anything, and they assumed they just had a sleepover quarrel on their hands. Bowe took the com away from your mother, we didn’t have any other calls, Corinthian was in communication with Bowe—we still didn’t know what sleepover he was in. But Corinthian crew knew. They occupied the bar, maybe intending to get their officer out and back to the ship where the cops couldn’t get him, maybe going to take Marie with them, we had no idea. We couldn’t get any information out of station com, the police weren’t feeding us Corinthian’s communications with them or with Bowe, ours were breaking up if we didn’t use the station relay, but by now we had no doubt where Marie was—I was on the station direct line trying to get the stationmaster to get the police off their reg-u-lations to get in there, but nobody wanted to wake him up, the alterday stationmaster was an ass, insisted they were moving in a negotiating team. Meanwhile Heston and mama and some of the rest of the crew went into the bar after Marie. Corinthian crew had opened up the liquor—you can imagine. Things blew up. A Corinthian got his arm broken with a bar chair, the station cops got into it, they couldn’t force the doors. By time we got the mainday station-master out of bed, a cop was in station hospital, six of your future cousins were in our infirmary, about an equal number of Corinthian crew were bleeding on the deck, and things were at a standoff, with station section doors shut.”