Tripoint

"Sit down," the woman said.

She did. The agent offered to get her water. She said yes. She wasn't through asking questions and they were distressed on her account, moving to get her whatever she wanted. "I want the credit record. If my son was on this station, I want to know who paid, where he slept…"

The woman looked doubtful. The damn com beeped again, and she cut it off, completely. "I have to know," she said. "This is my son. "

"Just a minute," the woman said, and went somewhere. Officer Lee came back with the water and sat and asked her stupid questions, trying to distract her. She kept her calm, played the part. It was maybe thirty minutes before the woman came back, looking grim, and said there hadn't been any credit record, but that the young woman, the passport number he'd been with on customs exit, had run up big bills at the fanciest sleepover on Pell. Big bills at a clothing store. At Pell's fanciest restaurant. Di

"I see," she said, a little numb, it was true. Maybe a little grey around the edges. But it did answer things.

"You might check station mail. He might have left a message."

"I have, thank you, Ms…"

"Raines."

"Ms. Raines. Thank you very much. " She shook hands. She was polite. She thanked Officer Lee.

She came to herself maybe half an hour later, in front of a shop window, and didn't know where she was until she looked at the dock signs opposite.

She had to get out of this port. She had to find that son of a bitch. Forget Tom. A nice-looking girl, fancy clothes, damned… shallow… kid. Probably scared, probably saw a cheap way out, just go along with it, wasn't too uncomfortable, he had a lot of money, Corinthianwould give it to him, because Austinwanted to get to her. Austin wasn't going to drop the boy in any port, wasn't going to sell him out to the Fleet, no need. Tom had sold himself, for a fancy bed and fancy clothes and the best restaurants and a girl who'd do whatever it took to keep him and keep his mouth shut.

Damn him. You could see the boy's point of view. Easier to be courted than shake his fist in Austin's face and take the hits.

Easier to be let loose dockside with a pretty girl and more money than Spriteever allotted its junior crew. Easier to be plied with lies and promises. Austin could be a charming bastard. A very charming bastard, give or take that the rough edge wasn't a put-on, far from it.

And give or take that the man's taste in bedmates ran to whores. That detail wasn't going to impact Tom's little bubble too seriously.

Hell!

She went to a bar. She ordered a drink, nother habit. She flipped on the hand-held, drank, and stared at the meaningless scroll of figures. She couldn't leave this port until they'd offloaded. That was happening, as fast as the cans could roll out.

And that bastard on Corinthianwas on his way back through Tripoint.

She'd suspectedTripoint was the dark hole where Corinthianpursued its private business, the off-the-record trades with God knew what agencies—it was a vast, gravitationally disturbed space, with no station to provide an information-flow: a dozen ships could lie there, silent, absolutely impossible to spot if you didn't know exactly where they were; ships could move, and the place was so vast the presence-wave wouldn't reach you for hours… you didn't know what might be watching you.

But Corinthianhadn't waited on this leg—they'd kited through and been gone by the time they'd come through.

Expecting trouble, it was clear.

Time-wise, Corinthianwas in hyperspace now. A ship that followed them for the next month, real-time, would exist there right along with them until Corinthiandropped out again, and the vector was Tripoint. Again. Where Corinthianhad business to do.

But Spritecouldn't catch them. The gods of physics afforded no chance to one freighter to overtake another with Corinthian'shead start—unless Spritewas ru

Tell the Family they were going back to Viking empty? That, having cleared one chancy low-mass, high-value deal at Pell, for which they'd had to dip into bank reserves, they were going to throw away everything they'd just gained at enormous risk—and run empty back to Viking-via-Tripoint?

No way. No way in hell. She could muster the votes against Mischa on the matter of the Pell run, because she could threaten the sure economic disaster of her quitting, against the promise of profit. She couldn't get anywhere in a vote by demanding a disaster.

She swallowed a mouthful of ice-melt and vodka and did a different-criteria search through the market.

Pell… was the gateway to Earth. To arts. To culture.

Books. Zero mass. Vids. Software. Distribution licenses. Always high-priced because ships bid on them. But ships only bid so much, usually scooping up what they could get without a fight, because it was a chancy market, riding local fads, and the willingness of some station-side promoter to take it off your hands where you were going… so if you were willing to gamble big that you knew tastes where it was going… ordinarily you could get it, the info-market being quiet, low-tension, not subject to big bids from ships that better understood the market for frozen foods and machine parts.

She took out her stylus, punched the keys you couldn't accidentally access with bare fingers, and money moved.

Data moved.

Data flooded into Sprite'sblack-box info-storage. Permits, licenses. Credit. Text. Images. Patents. Two solid hours, while she sipped fruit-juice and vodka, of high-speed input—in which the info-market accelerated, picked up interest on some items—then hyped into a wild surge of activity.

She traded back some books, some vids, snapped up rights less useful to ships that didn't reach deep in Union territory: license to reproduce at Union ports and points further, exclusive rights down routes reachable from Unionside—prices ballooned as ships bid to get a speculative commodity they regularly dabbled in, rights they routinely bid on, ships and stationside interests battling each other for what somebody unknown was going for in huge quantities. The whole info-market soared as station-side speculators and automatic trading programs saw a rising price and a limited availability and went for it. Feeding frenzy set in, sent prices crazy. She sat it out for fifteen minutes and sipped her drink while the market computers registered a flurry of trades.

Four ships and one publishing house released major holdings to profit-take on the market, she grabbed it all and resold, bought hand and fist on the panic, and the market dropped and rose and ticked into stability as the regulators slammed the lid on.

She keyed Spritefor departure at m2330h, then, scant time to get the Dee Imports cans offloaded and get the tanks filled.

After which, she turned on her pocket-corn and told Mischa they were in count for departure in under twenty-four hours, beep everybody who was out.

" Marie, "Mischa said calmly, " where are you?" Less calmly: "— Are you in some bar?"

"Noisy? I said 24 hours, Mischa, do you copy? We're bought up. We're going. I've made a profit just sitting here and logged us for departure. You can check the schedule board."

"Marie. We aren't loaded. "

"Zero-mass. Publishing rights. Tons of publishing rights. We're bought and loaded. It's in Sprite'sdatabanks right now, didn't you notice that little light flicker? Every cent we have in credit. It's time-critical and I suggest we pull out the second the tanks are filled."