Hawkins himself didn’t know. But Hawkins would discover it. Hawkins would learn, in the process, what his options were—because—he himself had realized it at an instinctive level in the moment when he’d sent Hawkins to the galley—you couldn’t turn Hawkins loose and expect him not to come back at you. You learned, running hired-crew, who would and who wouldn’t be safe under what conditions. You bet your life on your decisions in that department, your life, your livelihood, and the ship and everyone in it on your understanding of human nature. You learned to assess who had brains and who was just fucking mean, and how they’d move when they moved—you knew it even if the man himself didn’t know.
And this Hawkins could maybe forget an ongoing personal grievance for maybe a day, a week, however long it took things to sort out around him. But this Hawkins, when he’d made you a serious case, didn’t forget, didn’t give up, once he had his feet under him. Never give Tom Hawkins room to lay plans. Never give Tom Hawkins the idea you were going to do harm where he had an allegiance.
“Mark ten seconds to jump. Eight… seven…”
Son of a bitch. Hawkins was.
“… six… five… four… three… two… one…”
Gone.
Bad luck to you, Marie Hawkins.
—ii—
SPRITE DROPPED IN… electronic impulses probed the dark.
Found no echoes, no substance but the nearest radiating mass.
Which didn’t surprise Marie.
Didn’t have a hope Bowe was here. She knew his habits. Knew the way he thought. He wouldn’t take the chance. Hadn’t tracked the man for twenty years without understanding how he worked and what his tactics were.
So he was out of Tripoint, maybe spending a day or two he knew he could afford, but he wouldn’t cut the margin fine enough to compromise the gap between them. He wanted all the loading time at Pell he could get. He’d run through Tripoint fast enough to make him comfortable, not fast enough, of course, that it could possibly seem to his crew that he was running from a confrontation with little, unarmed Sprite, and with Marie Hawkins.
But he’d struck at her—personally. Spitefully. She was supposed to lose her composure—possibly make bad decisions. Push the Family into a dry run?
Lose money, maybe fatally for Sprite and its operations? The Family wasn’t crazy and Sprite’s cargo officer knew the Pell market, though she’d never been there. She knew it because it was part of the web, she knew it the way she’d known the specific figures of adjacent markets for twenty years, always holding herself ready to divert Sprite on short notice if she found Bowe in reach.
Planned ahead, damned right.
Sorry, Austin. I’m not a fool.
And I’ve got the votes in Sprite crew. Mischa didn’t want an election called.
“He’s not here,” Mischa called down to say.
Bravo, Mischa, late again. I know that.
“Marie?”
“I hear that. “ She bit her tongue short of the acid remark she wanted to make. She left Mischa nothing, nothing to take hold of. It drove him crazy.
“We’re transiting the point as fast as we can. Exit as soon as we run the checks. “
That was the prior agreement. Mischa needed to call her, early on in their arrival at Tripoint? Mischa surely had a point to make.
“Maybe Tom’s worked right in, do you think?”
Oh, Mischa was bitter. Rubbed salt into it.
“You always said,” Mischa purred into the silence of the ship, insidious as the systems-sounds, “like father, like son. “
“Did I? Maybe he will. Maybe he’ll use the figures I taught him.”
“What figures?”
“Mischa, Mischa, what do I deal with? In and out of my office all the time… why do you think Saja put Tom on main crew?”
Electronic pop. The com had been bridge-wide until then. She’d bet on it.
“I’ve had about enough, Marie. “
“Yeah,” she said. “Only this time we’re doing something.”
“Don’t push me, Marie. “
“Don’t put me on broadcast again.”
Click.
Straight out of jump and into a personal argument. Marie sipped the nutri-pack and shut her eyes, alone in the cargo office. Jump-point entry didn’t need cargo officers but one, in case something went egregiously wrong and they had to blow the holds and shed mass. But now entry was a fact, the rest of Cargo main shift came straying in, to start checking readout from the warm-cans, and the other specific-conditions cans in the hold, checking the computer records, making sure nothing had changed in data and nothing had screwed in programs… big excitement. She was trying to recover a train of thought from before jump, she always insisted to do that.