Finity's End

The other opinion, completely opposite, was that some really big pirate action was in the offing, some operation that needed deep cover, so Finity was buying high-value (therefore low-mass) cargo with what only looked like her own funds so as to look as if pirate-catching was no longer on her agenda.

The tally of ships of the former Fleet caught and dealt with varied with accounts, even official ones. In the vast and deep dark of the Beyond, the negative couldn’t be proven, and a destroyed ship, given the legendary ca

Elene inclined to a mix of those beliefs, convinced, first, that Mazian was a threat diminishing rather than rising; second, that the end of the pirate wars would be a wind-down and never a provable victory; and third, that the critical danger to the human species was not in a Fleet mostly driven in retreat, secret base or no secret base. The Fleet had been the demon in the dark for so long that it had taken on a quality of myth, so potent a myth that Alliance and Union administrators alike need only say the dire word Mazian , and a funding bill passed

But the downside of that preoccupation with the Mazia

Her own councillors said she was out of date, obsessed with history, unable to forgive the Estelle disaster. She should become more progressive in her thinking and give up the bitterness of a War grown inconvenient in modern politics.

Like hell.

“Seven years,” Elene said, stalking her topic as the waiters carried off the empty salad plates. She knew who was at surrounding tables, two of her loyal aides and the policy chairman. She knew this area of the restaurant, she knew the noise levels, precisely how far voices carried, which was not far at all. She’d have ski

James Robert’s expression was a parchment mask. The eyes, darting to hers, were immediately lively and calculating.

“Fairly good,” James Robert said, an answer the commodities dealers would be very interested to hear. “Granted Union behaves itself.” The inevitable stinger. Yea and nay in two breaths. James Robert to the core.

“We’re turning full-time to honest trade,” Francie said. “At least that’s our ambition.”

“Peaceful trade,” Madison added, lifting his glass. “Confusion to Cyteen and to Mother Earth.”

“To peace,” Damon said, more politic, and Francie and Alan emptied glasses to the bottom.

Then the main course arrived, a flurry of carts and waiters, during which Finity passed around the bottle and did their own wine-pouring, to the consternation of the wait-staff—they were spacers to the bone, and if the waiters couldn’t handle empty glasses fast enough, then they did for themselves, ignoring station protocols and etiquette as blithely as they’d done for decades. They were nothing if not self-sufficient and reckless of external protocols.

As the Quens had once been, on their own deck, Elene could not but reflect. And now the almost-last of the Quens finagled and hoped and co

She could sway the internal government of Pell. That was half the Alliance. The approval of the Alliance Council of Captains—that was the sticking point in her plans. And that meant, significantly, the leadership of James Robert Neihart.

“A brave new world of peace,” she reprised, as the waiters and the cart went away, and before the conversation could drift, “ Finity , I have a proposal. Let me assure you we’re sound-secured here at this table, for a start, I think you know that.”

James Robert lifted his chin, looked at her through half-lidded eyes.

“A proposal for which I need funds and backing in Council.”

Her husband Damon knew exactly what she was up to the minute she made the opening: she was sure he did, and she knew he was holding all his arguments resolutely behind his teeth. Two decades was time enough to say everything there possibly was to say on the subject between them, and he couldn’t deter her now, make or break. If Finity’s End was here to declare the War was entering a new phase, if there was a change in the offing, she had her agenda.

“For what?” Madison asked “A crisis? A proposition?”

“Both,” she said. Finity was not that far out of the current of things, at any time. Finity’s votes in the Alliance Council were regular, received on the network of ship contacts that didn’t rely on hyperspace, just regular ship traffic at any station dock. “Peace with Union, yes, peace and trade, and ships , Alliance ships. Built at Pell .”

“We need another bottle,” Madison said, “for this one.”

James Robert, senior captain, hadn’t given his reaction to the topic.

She signaled a waiter, hand signal, for three bottles. The maitre d’ was in line of sight. The wine arrived. There was the ancient etiquette of the bottle, the glasses. The universe teetered on a mood, a small-talk graciousness that still prevailed. The waiter filled glasses and withdrew.

She was acutely aware in the interim of a stationer husband at her side, a patient man, a saint of a man, who slept alongside a shiplost spacer’s heartache and knew his home never was home to her. After two children and eighteen years, what was between them was no longer the blind love they’d started with. They’d seen and done too much, too desperately. But it was a lifelong commitment now, a partnership she’d never altogether betray because it had held the same interests too long. She reached, beneath the table, for his hand, and held it, a promise strong as an oath, keen as a cry.

“It’s a serious business,” James Robert said when the waiters were gone.

She knew all the objections. One rebuilt ship, as they’d debated time and again, opened up the question of what other War casualty ships might be resurrected and where those ships would fit in the trade routes of the Alliance, in an age when merchanters, with a vastly changed set of routes, were doing well, but not that well.

Never mind Pell’s internal debates in such a decision: merchanters, members of the Alliance Council of Captains, had suballiances within their ranks; and if Finity did her a favor on that scale, and backed her request for funds, then debts would come due left and right, other ships to Finity, Finity to other ships and to Pell—and Mallory. Favor-points in a merchanter crew meant owing someone a drink, a duty-shift. On this scale, one favor nudged another until it shook the recently settled universe all over again.