Tripoint

"Going to cost you," Capella said.

And didn't say a thing more as Christian nudged him into motion.

But he couldn't go without a look at Tink and Jamal. Couldn't say a good-bye that wasn't supposed to happen—that from second to second he wasn't sure was going to happen, or that he wanted to happen. He only looked to fix their faces in his mind, and chanced to see a very different Capella standing by the counter, a Capella all business and grim as hell's gates.

Christian swung him around abruptly, took him the familiar route back to the brig. A quiet route. The lowerdecks crew were doing their last minute scurrying about, and half the passenger ring would be securing for dock, crew and stations that belonged there gathering thick in docking stations, corridors crowding up along the take-holds.

There were lewd comments, offers to take 'the new boy' onto the docks. Christian didn't spare a glance, just hurried him around the turn to the brig, a corridor full of its own offers and comments… worrisome comments from dockers at take-holds up and down, waiting for the grapple-to and the lock to open. Rough crowd. Rude crowd. They held it down when Christian said stow it, but Christian didn't have to wait out the docking in an open-fronted cell, and it wasn't aimed at him.

Besides which, Capella had made Christian mad, and Christian wasn't talking to him, until Christian took him inside the brig and to the far rear by the bath, face to face with him.

"What did Capella say?"

"Didn't. I don't know what she wanted. She hadn't gotten that far. " His back was against the wall. It wasn't a position he wanted in a fight. At least the cable wasn't on, this time.

But Christian didn't shove him further. Instead, he reached inside his jacket and pulled out a dozen passports, Union red and Alliance blue. Thumbed open the topmost, red.

To his picture, his name. His passport, his papers, all the freedom to pass customs and take hire, even to prove his identity and origin. Everything was in that red folder. He reached for it—but Christian snapped it shut and held it with the others.

Christian's terms. Everything was, and Christian was smug and smooth.

"After," Christian said. "After we walk out. Duty officer carries the papers on all the dockers, that's the way we work. They go out first. It's going to look like you slipped through… I was taking you to Medical, right?"

"I guess."

"You hit your head during dock. Only on the way to Medical, you broke and ran for it, and mixed in with outbound crew. Probably you faked the bump. Got it? Only that's just the story I tell about how you got out, am I doing this in small enough words, slower brother? I do things like always, take these guys out and you just come along with me through customs… these guys have zero percentage in calling me a liar. They have to deal with me tomorrow, and they won't notice a thing when papa asks, how's that?"

"I need my papers."

"What I've got here," Christian said, pocketed the passports, and reached in a side pocket for a short stack of notes, Alliance cash. "That's two hundred, immediate save-your-ass cash. I can give you a name, a ship that'll take hire. Name's Christophe Martin. I'll walk you down there, myself. Get you hired, get you papers, Martin's going out tomorrow."

"Where?"

"Viking. Meet your approval?"

Breath came short. "Yeah. " He suddenly had to revise everything. The two hundred, he hadn't imagined—and the recommendation to another, outbound ship, immediately, without having to hang around Pell. It was everything he could hope to get on his own, heaped up and ru

It only didn't add on Christian's side, on thisship—the passport missing, on a guy who also turned up missing from Christian's escort… Christian was going to catch hell for it, was what it looked like.

Maybe that was why Capella had wanted to talk to him, maybe that was why the voice in his dreams kept saying Don't trust Christian… and maybe becausethe warning had come in hyperspace it threaded its way into his waking mind without any denying it… that voice was Capella, too, he was sure it was, and he couldn't help doubting, and couldn't figure what Christian was doing.

An expensive favor. Clearly. He might have to revise his opinion on Christian. Maybe Christian was paying a price for what he did, and hadto shove him out the door hard and fast and for his own selfish reasons, but Christian hadn't had to give him the money.

Christian left, without putting the cable on—left him to the catcalls and promises of the crew outside. He'd heard the door lock. For the first time he was glad it was locked, and he hoped opening it wasn't just a button push.

"Hey, pretty-boy," someone yelled.

He went to his bunk and sat down. In a moment more, the take-hold sounded, and he took a firm grip on the inset handhold, next to the e-panel.

Interminable minutes, then, to dock. He sat and tried not to chase those circular paths of thought again, why, or how, or what the choices were. His were all made.

Maybe there was a chance of seeing Marie again. Of his own quarters, on Sprite.

Hell, they'd have bumped somebody into his space. There was always a waiting list, and his cousins wouldn't have waited till the sheets were washed.

Didn't bloody miss them. That was the unhappy truth. Marie… Marie wasn't an affection, she was a bleeding wound. But she was his bleeding wound. He couldn't but ask himself where she was and what was happening to her. He likedTink. He was glad he'd met Tink. He couldn't say that about a lot of people. But he had to get back. Something about bad pe

Mischa was going to be so glad to see him. Rodman was going to die. It was a kind of revenge. Let them think they were rid of him. He didn't know what Rodman would say. He was almost homesick to hear it. Didn't even want to beat hell out of him. They were getting old for that solution. In a couple of weeks subjective time, he'd suddenly arrived at that point of maturity.

Give him a couple of weeks with Rodman, he'd recover his edge.

Bump and touch. It wasn't easy to claim a head injury with thatdock. No fault to find in the station's computers, the ship's engineers, or the pilot at the helm.

Butterflies hit his stomach. As soon as that touch came, the crew outside the bars left their take-hold points and started for the airlock, while the echo of the grapples locking was still ringing through the hull. The corridor emptied. Fast.

Then he thought… maybe Christian won't come. Maybe it's all a joke.

Maybe Austin caught him with the documents. Maybe Capella spilled the whole business.

I

He wanted to go. He truly wanted to.

The grid started retracting. Christian showed up, outside. "Hurry up," Christian snarked at him, and he hurried, out and along with Christian, overtaking the crew in the airlock. Christian yelled for quiet, ordered a line-up along the wall, started calling out names and sorting through the passports and papers.

"Anybody I didn't call, stay the hell aboard, go find the chief and tell her you need documents."

There was one, who swore and complained he'd turned in his fuckin' papers, he hadn't had them, it was a Corinthianscrew-up.

"It's a clerical, all right. Just get back there," Christian said, and strode along the ragged line, holding him by the elbow, the fistful of passports in the other. "Come on. Stay a damn line, for God's sake! Look like business, and don't mouth off to Pell customs, they got a nasty habit of dropping you out of computers, screw your accounts, you don't need that kind of trouble, so shut up!"