Tripoint

She brought her fist down on the console. "Shut up, Mischa, dammit! Saja,—Sully, plus 2 out of plane at 5 g's, count of five, now!"

"Set," helm said.

"Abort that, Sully, kill it!"

"Somebody better do something," Sully said.

Marie flung herself onto a safety bench and grabbed the belts. Shoved the catches closed.

"I'm calling a captaincy vote. Now. Saja. Sully. Do it!"

Ship moved. Hard.

—vi—

"SCARED THEM," MIKE REMARKED. Austin murmured a preoccupied yeah, and registered Sprite'sin-progress coordinate change as one problem down. Or up. At least not in line of fire. Spritemoved, sending its noisy ID out into the dark. Corinthianmoved in EM silence, except the minor engines, passive scan only.

Figure Silver Dreamwas in motion, too, not in hard-scan range, but gathering realspace speed, off which her own missiles and inerts could be effective.

A Fleet renegade. Hope this Patrick didn't have an approach code that could let him dive inside the hulk's self-defined perimeter. Every klick he had to maneuver, every precaution he had to take to avoid it was an accuracy problem. And if he didn't know the hulk was armed—he knew Corinthianwas; and had to assume that Spritewas.

And, mistake—but they weren't going to explain it—Patrick had to assume that Spritewas on Corinthian'sside, and had just maneuvered to fire up Silver Dream'sapproach path.

Number two monitor had just gone live. A blinking blue circle framed a patch of what could look exactly like every other patch of starry space.

The Object was out there. That was what Bianco meant by switching him that black image, with the dot flashing in the center. Couldn't see it yet. Graininess of the image was equal to the dusting of stars equally dim.

Meanwhile… meanwhile… ask what Spritethought it was going to do, with its little rail-gun, at one light-second.

Fire at them or fire at Silver Dream, who wouldn't believe protestations of non-combatancy.

Question who was in control on that ship, or what it was bidding for. And if Capella was right…

"Nav."

"Sir."

"Does the Object take being fired toward?"

"No, sir, it's real pissed if that happens. Recommend not. "

Could guess that, all right. Hope the fool on Spritedidn't try it.

And maybe Patrick knew that, too, or suspected it, and pla

A shadow appeared on the screen that targeted the hulk, now, frighteningly fast growth of a darkness against the dust.

Freighter. Years dead. Gutted. As good a warehouse as you could ask for, a cargo-handling rig as fast as a completely zero- grack could afford, just hit the release when they came off the line and hope a rebound didn't come back at you… hellish enough, trying to rush the cans out.

Damn lunatic Spritetrying to shoot two-credit missiles at you the while…

But the hands were good, and that cargo offload could be blinding fast, if you weren't worrying about fragiles—and most of what they were hauling wasn't, give or take the Scotch.

A few real high-mass cans. Steel rods. They were to worry about, when they were in motion. Inertial within the capacity of that rack, their mass exceeded can limits. Bitchy load even on a station dock, at their slow speeds. And a zero- gline tended to develop oscillations— helldealing with that mass.

Hope Patrick made acquaintance of the inerts, head on, before he gathered venough for shielding effect. It took far longer to dock and offload than it did to run those cans out into space… but inside the hulk's perimeter, with that card in, they had, according to the second chief, something she vitally needed… provided Patrick didn't also have codes to let him approach.

Damn lot of variables.

And Patrick's estimated position was shifting constantly now in the numbers on his screen. Patrick had begun his run—in longscan's primary estimation. That estimated vwas coming up fast.

Couldn't fire dead ahead while you were putting on vlike that—you'd run into your own ordnance. Patrick had to get off a passing or retreating shot. The EM bath that Sprite'sID was sending out was no help at all. It echoed off solids, just like radar. Thank you, thank you, Marie Hawkins.

"This HAVOC code, nav, just what's it do?"

"Sir, I think it'll respect the user. Nothing else. Damn sure nothing shooting at it. "

"Hulk won't do that anyway, will it?"

"Sir, I'm not need-to-know on that level. "

Shit.

And the Hawkinses out there, ship full of fools.

Shit on them.

Beatrice wasn't talking. Not since drop. Probably was aware, but when Beatrice was working this particular bitch of an approach, she was in her own universe. The Object had no motion to speak of, but their two masses made one bitch of an impact possible, if they didn't soft-touch, and the Object didn't talk to you. Silent as any spook, always. Cold. Very.

Beatrice professed not to like it.

Like she didn't like sex.

Sudden slam from the engines. The screen suddenly showed an on-rushing dark spot. The blot on the stars rushed at the camera. Filled the screen, total dark.

Jolt. Stop.

The body had—gut-level, intellectual, rational functions to the contrary, and no matter how many times they'd done it—braced for impact.

"We have the Object between us and Sprite, "Beatrice a

"Thank you, helm. Yes, we believe nav, because we have no fucking choice."

He punched general com. "This is the captain. We have a very short window to offload. Enemy is in system, proceeding toward us from dead vat two seconds light. We will, however, offload to shed mass, and we are going to offload at all possible speed. We ca

—vii—

"I'M GOING," TOM SAID, still flat in bed, while trim-up went on. "Got to be at least an e-suit or something I can borrow. Saby, I swear to you. I grew up in the cargo office, I know the boards, I know the equipment. I've worked the line. I swear, I swear Iwon't screw it, I don't want to sit up here waiting to be blown."

He expected argument. But Saby didn't argue.

"Michaels has to be on the bridge. He's our gu

Michaels. He remembered a man beaten.

Remembered why, then. Knew the rules, Tink said. Follow the rules. Ship was at stake. All their lives. Ship had its own logic. Forget everything else.

Remembered Michaels… saying, Kid's shaky… light duty…

Contact. Easy bump. Grapples activated, banged into lock.

Saby's belts clicked on that sound. So did his, and he cleared her path as she scrambled across—tried to help her up and threw a supporting hand against the wall, his own equilibrium not so reliable as he'd thought.