He’d hoped for somebody like Emilia. No such luck. Christophe Martin and Mississip, both Earth-bound, were the best of a chancy lot. He put his bet on Martin, with a departure listed for 36 hours; and on the fifteen thousand hard-won credits he had in Alliance Bank. Five thousand might tempt Martin’s recruitment officer. But ‘might’ was too chancy a word. Ten. It hurt, it really hurt, but ten was a sure thing.
The closer he got to the decision, the closer Corinthian drew to Pell and dock, the scarier it got. Not that elder brother had a shred of evidence against them, not even ID, if he didn’t give it back, and he didn’t intend to.
In point of fact he was scared stiff. Austin might not have figured out yet that Hawkins was a threat. But he had. Too damned clean. Give brother priss a year or two to get an eyeful and an earful of Corinthian’s business. Family Boy that he was, he’d start to pull back, just too, too clean for Corinthian, just too by-the-book. He’d leave them, sooner or later he’d leave them or he’d slip the evidence to somebody about the trade Corinthian ran.
He saw the problem coming. Think ahead, Austin kept saying. So he did.
Sometimes, dammit, you did things you knew you’d pay for—because you could see far enough to know where doing nothing was going to leave you. Sometimes you did what was good for the ship.
Wasn’t that what Austin used to say to him?
Didn’t mean Austin wouldn’t have him in the brig when they left port.
But he could get out of that. He could survive that. He couldn’t survive Austin finding out older brother was ever so much more spit ‘n polish and ever so much more yessir, johnny on the spot, sir, than Christian. Older brother might even have trade figures in his head that Austin might very much like to know. Older brother could get himself worked into Corinthian if they didn’t watch out, worked in so deep that younger brother Christian just didn’t know anything anymore—point in fact, he’d seemed to know less and less the harder he worked to get Austin to admit he knew anything at all.
Point in fact, Corinthian couldn’t survive Hawkins’ attack of law-abiding conscience when it came. He saw it. He even halfway liked Hawkins, for the same straight-up mentality that attracted and infuriated Austin, he saw that, too. But Austin had illusions he was righteous, Beatrice had that pegged.
Trouble was, Austin wasn’t damned righteous with the authorities in Hawkins’ case. It was the righteous sons of bitches who didn’t have any doubts when they did you in, and Hawkins was so straight you could feel honesty dripping off him—feel it in the way Austin went slightly crazy dealing with him. Hawkins being more right than Austin… got Austin dead center, and to prove he was God, Austin was just going to suck older brother deeper and deeper into Corinthian, never understanding what stupid younger brother understood as a fact of life: that wars between two righteous asses ended up in double-crosses and a wide devastation.
Righteous had never described him, at least. On Corinthian there could only be one, clearly Austin, and the rest of them slunk around the edges of Austin’s principles and Austin’s absolute yesses and absolute noes—and kept the ship out of hock.
—v—
“THAT’S WELCOME, CORINTHIAN, you’re in queue as you bear. Pretty entry, compliments to your pilot and your navigators. Market quotes packet will accompany, trade band. Mark one minute.”
“Flattery, flattery, Pell Control. Can it get us a berth near green 12? Acknowledge receipt nav pack. Stand by for Corinthian information packet, band 3. Transmitting in thirty seconds. Please signify receipt and action on signal.”
Light-lag still bound conversation. Compressed com was an artform. You jumped from topic to topic and had to remember several threads of conversation at once, with your answer and more of their conversation coming a large number of minutes later.
As well as trusting the com techs to snatch the hard compression data when it came, a squeal the computers read. Beatrice was preening, most likely. Austin propped one heel on the other ankle and sighed, hoping for that berth.