Tripoint

Christian got up.

"Better get you back," Christian said. So the deal seemed done.

—v—

OLDER BROTHER WAS THINKING ON the way back to the brig. Older brother was limping, too—the guys had exceeded suggestions, and that was a problem. "Tell anybody that asks," Christian said, "that it was me that gave you the black eye."

"Is it black?"

"It will be."

Damned odd, Christian thought, everything was so placid of a sudden. They came to the brig, and he figured then that all the rules still applied, in Austin's book, and therefore in his, no matter that older brother wasn't in fighting form. "Cable," Christian said, and Hawkins went inside, picked it up off the floor and locked the bracelet on his own wrist. "Let me see it."

He shut the grid. Hawkins came to the bars and let him inspect the bracelet. The wrist and hand were bruised dark, ugly and painful looking. And the lock was solid.

"Yeah," he said, thought about offering to change hands with the lock, but, hell, they weren't a charity. He started off down the corridor, to leave older brother to his own amusement, or to get to sleep, or whatever, but it occurred to him then that there were reasons security might lock down tight after the rumors got topside, lock down in ways that would screw everything. Besides, older brother might do something entirely stupid if Austin came down in Austin's morning to check on the rumors that were bound to get started—he didn't trust Jamal's discretion or Tink's to hold them off five minutes longer than it took a casual mention to get up to the bridge.

So he went back to the bars, leaned there. Hawkins had sat down on his bunk.

"Hawkins. A warning. If our mutual papa says you're scum, say yes, sir, thank you, sir. That's all. No matter what."

Hawkins' jaw set. You could see the muscle clench. "Man's an ass."

"Hawkins. A small touch of sanity. You're already on scrub. You want to find yourself working four shifts on scrub? No sleep? That's your choice. You keep your mouth under control."

A moment of surly silence.

"Son of a fool bitch," he said, "I'm trying to get you out of here. I'm trying to save your ass. Can we have a yes out of the savee? Can we have a thank you, just a trial run?"

Hawkins kept glaring at him. Didn't trust him, and properly so. But then Hawkins said, "Yeah. Thanks."

"Mouth, Hawkins-brother?"

"Yeah. " Hawkins dropped his stare, at least. Tucked a foot up under the other leg and winced. "I hear. I understand you."

"Easy to pronounce, please and yessir. Get you out of a lot of situations."

Hawkins didn't say a thing.

"Damned fool," Christian said with a shake of his head, but he knew the look, he saw it on Austin, he saw it in mirrors when he'd had a run-in with authority. He withdrew his arms from the bars and went on down the corridor with his own blood pressure up, and with an intense urge to do bodily harm to Hawkins before he got off this ship.

So it didn't make sense that the bloody mess the guys had left Hawkins in should turn his stomach queasy, or make sense that the bruises he'd left had touched the same nerves. He'd seen worse. He'd probably done worse, he didn't keep count.

Didn't know why, when he got up to the bridge and went through his initial shift-change checks—an hour late—he kept flashing on that parting argument and Hawkins' bruises—his fault—and how, just quite strangely, in a ship full of hire-ons you couldn't trust and a handful you knew you could rely on to guard your back, he had an instant expectation of Tom Hawkins' behavior, the body language, the way he worked, an expectation what he was thinking and what it took to get him off a point he wanted to hold…

But, dammit, he had no choice.

He walked the aisles, monitored their course. They'd been lazing along for a full run of the clock in the dark of Tripoint, eating, sleeping, checking and fixing and maintaining. Midway through his watch they'd do a long burn, no traffic problems here, get up to speed on their outbound vector toward Pell.

After which it was Austin's watch, and Beatrice would take them through. He managed the shift, when the number one crew was off… he set up the numbers and the number one crew ran them. Routine, this place, this nearest mass that was nothing but a radiating black lump in the starry dark. The techs were hewing to a long-established procedures list, for this precise place.

"Got it. Thanks. " He signed a check-sheet, meaning the bridge hadn't blown up an hour-thirty into the watch.

The techs around him were in danger of falling asleep of boredom—a contagious condition. Mainday shift on an alter-day ship only punched buttons and checked readout. And stayed ready for the instant of absolute terror that could be an inbound rock. It did happen. Or an inbound and oncoming ship. With Marie Hawkins possibly on their tail—who knew what was a possibility?

The further he got from the moment the more it seemed crazy to have taken Hawkins into his own quarters, behind locked doors. Hell if he'd have done that with hired crew. Austin would skin him if the guy didn't stick a knife in him for his trouble. Stupid, what he'd done. Gave him cold chills just thinking about it.

But he hadread Hawkins. He'd been absolutely confident. He'd known and he'd guessed right—the way he'd gone from gut-level irritation to body-sense understanding what Hawkins was doing. Next was guessing what the son of a bitch was going to—

Hands touched his back.

He yelled and spun around with an elbow for the offender.

Capella was faster than that, and a centimeter out of range.

"Don't walk up on me! This is the bridge, not a—"

"Not what?"

Capella had logical business on the bridge, the mainday chief having every right to be where she was.

Meanwhile, among the techs, Bowe, Perrault, and eclectic, not a head had turned. Everybody on the bridge knew the situation between the captain's-son-mainday-chief-officer and the lend-lease navigator. He grabbed Capella's wrist and got her started in the officeward direction—and let go once she was launched. Hold onto Capella when you weren't joking and you were asking for a broken arm.

Which he wasn't. He led the way off to the central corridor, back to his office, and near enough to Austin's quarters and Beatrice's that he signaled quiet until he'd triggered the door.

"Need a favor," he said. "You know where they put older brother's effects, in downside Ops."

"Yeah. The safe."

"You know the combination."

"You want his stuff?"

"Yeah. But I can't get down there as easily."

Capella gave him a suspicious stare. "Yeah?"

"Dockside's on me this trip. And older brother's taking a walk while we just can't be responsible."

"Wait, wait, brake it, mister."

"Passport. Papers. ID. I want it."

"Christian-person. Walk like… cold, or walk like… off?"

"I mean I'm letting him go, shoving him off at Pell."

Capella's brows went together. Bang. "Straight to the cops. If Sprite'son our tail… if that ship comes in while we're there—"

"They had their full offload and load yet to do and we're wasting no time here. We'll be offloaded, loaded and out before they make a ripple at Pell."

"You're betting the ship. You're betting the whole fucking ship."

" I'm protectingour asses. He's trouble. He's major trouble on board."

"You're jealous."

"I'm not jealous."