Rimrunners

Damn dumb, Yeager, damn dumb. So who do they think you're working for if you aren't Mallory's?

Effin' obvious, Yeager.

"You lied to me," Wolfe said.

"Nossir. Everything the way I said. Crew slot is all I wanted, it's all I want right now."

Long silence. Wolfe never had any expression. She stood there, just went away a little inside, figured past a certain point they were going to do whatever they wanted to do and if command had made up their minds to freight her off to Pell and Mallory or space her inside the hour, there was damn-all she could do about it.

But this man could. Couldhelp her, if he would, if what happened in the 'decks ever concerned him at all, if he didn't just leave crew to suffer Fitch and Orsini's private war and their maneuvering for power—

There were ships like that, in the Fleet.

"When did you leave your ship?"

"Pell, sir. When the Fleet pulled away. I was on dockside." She added, uninvited, hammering away at what she wasn't sure Wolfe had heard the first and the second time:

"Not my ship now, sir. This is."

She wasn't sure Wolfe wasn't outright crazy. She wasn't sure she ought to take one course or the other with him. Or maybe nobody was loyal to this ship, and Wolfe just didn't figure her. He had that kind of look, just the least doubt in that cold, ice-blue stare.

Maybe he would just throw her back to Fitch and Orsini and let them fight it out.

What in hell does Wolfedo on this ship? she had asked Musa. And Musa, uncomfortable in the question: He ain't a real activistc

Man had to be aware too, that he wasn't totally safe, if she wanted to commit suicide and take him with her.

But he sat there. He rocked back in his chair and looked at her a long time and said,

"What's the last contact you had with the Fleet?"

That was the question. That was the big one. "Last was my com breaking up. On Pell.

Nothing since." She could see him saying to Fitch: Find out what she knows. She said, quietly: "Decks never knew anything, no more than here, sir."

Long, long silence, Wolfe just sitting there.

"Master sergeant, was it?"

"Yessir."

"Mechanic?"

"On my own rig, sir. Some of us were."

"Tactical."

"Tac-squad, sir."

"Where before that?"

"Came aboard at sixteen, sir. Born on a miner-ship."

Wolfe pushed his chair back on its track, got up, walked to the side of the desk. He wasn't armed. She'd thought he might be.

He walked to the side of her, walked around to her back. She didn't know what a civ would do under the circumstance, gone straight from dumb smartass kid to shipboard ma

Anything you say, sir.

Till you prove you're a fool, sir.

Till I know I got no percentage in anything, sir. Then I'll take a few.

But—

God, what'd they do with NG then? What'd NG do, himself?

Wolfe walked over to the low table and the cushion-chairs at the side of the office, meddled with something as if he'd forgotten her.

Maybe he had. Maybe he was just slightly crazy. Maybe he was going to see how long a skut could stand there without panicking and doing something stupid.

Indefinitely. Sir.

"Sit down," Wolfe said. She looked at him. He was offering her a chair at the office table.

That spooked her, when yelling wouldn't have. "Yessir," she said, and came and started to sit down, and then thought about her work-clothes and the chance of beer-spills, deck-dust or worse on that pretty white upholstery. She dusted off, for what good that would do, but Wolfe having sat down, she sat, opposite him, and watched him open the little box there.

Chess set. Real one, not just a sim. Real board, real pieces, God knew how old.

"You play?" he asked.

"Some," she said. In the 'decks you played anything and everything.

"Black or white?"

God, he was crazy, she was sitting here in the hands of a crazy man. "Your pick, sir."

He turned the box, gave her white.

So the first move had to be hers.

She frustrated him a couple of times, which he took with that same dead-cold, appraising look at the board that he gave to her while she answered his questionsc long, long after the shift-change bell.

What mining-ship?

What's Porey like?

Finally: How much elapsed-time on Tripoint-Pell?

Question that could kill a ship. Kill everyone she'd served with—if she was tekkie enough to know that answer down to a hair, what Africa'sru

But you had to know how much mass she'd been hauling.

Wolfe asked that too. And she honestly didn't know. The elapsed-time down to a half hour, but not a thing about the massc

"Made many runs in the Hinder Stars?"

"A couple. Mostly Pell-Mariner-Pan-paris. Wyatt's. Viking."

You'd remember that, sir. Remember it damn well, if you were a spook during the war.

While his fine-boned fingers moved a piece to threaten a knight, and a rook, some moves down.

"You remember the Gull?"

Name ought to mean something. There'd been a lot of names. They'd taken the Gull, a little ship, hell if she could sort out whether that was the one they'd blown or one of the ships that had decel'ed and taken boarders when they were operating at Tripoint.

Ship-corridors through the mask, past the green readout glow. Scared faces. Mostly scared faces.

Except the fools who tried to make a fight of it, locked body to body with a rider-ship, with marines oh their deck.

"Du

Something to do with you, sir? Or this ship"?

Wolfe didn't say more than that.

She took a pawn, worrying was she supposed to do that. Wolfe was a better player.

Wolfe was moves ahead, and he set you up a route he wanted you to take.

Did it this time.

"Shee—" she started to say, and swallowed it in time.

"Tac-squad," Wolfe said, moving a pawn. "Boarding party. Stations or ships."

"Yessir."

"Know what you're doing with docking equipment."

"Yessir."

"Weapons systems."

"Yessir."

She lost a pawn. Was going to lose a knight. She saw it. Moved the rook.

Damn.

"Armor?"

"Yessir."

"What do you think about this ship, Sgt. Yeager?"

"I'm not a sergeant anymore, sir."

"What do you think about this ship?"

"I got friends aboard."

"On Africatoo."

That was a hard thought; and damned clear what he was asking. "Yessir. But no way this ship could take her, and if she could, that's the way it is, got friends there, got friends on board here." She moved the threatened knight. "Don't even know who's alive anymore. Here I do. Me, for one."

"If you weren't on board?"

She honestly thought about that, put herself back on Africa, with Lokifor a target. Her hand hovered over a pawn and she lost her focus. Saw herself up on charges, old Junker Phillips' face—

"Have to shoot me," she said, and made the move, giving up the pawn. "I du

"So I've heard."

Heard about me and NG. God, I got him in trouble, maybe Musa, too, if Musa wasn't what he is—