eat a decent meal—and then touched the button that would project a schematic of their planned course and present position on the main screen. After only a moment’s hesitation, she blanked the workboard, locked her tapes into her personal strongbox, and started toward the passengers’ mess.
The larger cabin was surprisingly comfortable: whatever money had been budgeted for the paying passengers had been spent on its fittings. A galley console filled one narrow end of the room, and a much larger media center took up perhaps two-thirds of the long inner wall. At the moment, its green-black surface was broken into facets, each one showing either the ship’s projected course or an elaborate relative-times chart. They meant nothing, of course, but the room’s sole occupant had not bothered to adjust the controls. Electra FitzGilbert looked up as the door sighed back, and gave a curt nod of greeting. Heikki was too well-schooled to show her dismay, but she felt her heart sink. Where the hell’s Sten? she thought, and said aloud, “Good evening, Dam’ FitzGilbert.”
“Dam’ Heikki.” To Heikki’s surprise, the dark woman did not return to the workboard propped beside her tray, but blanked the screen and set it aside. “The dinner isn’t bad at all.”
A typical oblique ‘pointer invitation, Heikki thought. I wonder exactly what she wants? “Thanks,” she said, and turned to the menu displayed on the galley screen. It was typical FTLship fare, heavy on the ubiquitous grains and shipgrown vegetables, but healthy and satisfying. Heikki considered the list for a moment, then touched keys. A moment later, the serving hatch slid open, and Heikki collected the steaming dishes and slid them painfully onto the recessed tray. There was a small bar as well, but she settled for a pot of tea instead—alcohol and FTL travel did not mix well—and returned to the table. FitzGilbert was watching her from under lowered lashes.
“Your partner was in,” she said, after a moment.
“Oh?” Heikki hesitated for a moment, then decided that there was no point in refusing the overture point blank. “Did he eat?”
FitzGilbert shook her head. “He went off with the big man—he said he knew someone aboard?”
Nkosi would, Heikki thought. Pilots tended to have friends—or friends of friends—scattered across known space, precincts and Loop alike, and Jock was not the sort to miss any chance of renewing connections. “I’m not surprised,” she said. “Pilots do know people, and Sten used to be in FTL engineering.” It was a concession, she thought, but a cheap one: anyone could check Sten’s records.
“And you, you’re Iadaran?” FitzGilbert asked.
Not subtle, Heikki thought. Not subtle at all. “I lived on Iadara—with my family—for about twelve years.”
“With your family,” FitzGilbert repeated. “And your mother worked for Lo-Moth.”
It was not a question, but Heikki shook her head anyway. “She was an independent consultant, under contract to Lo-Moth.” I’ll answer about three more questions, she decided silently, and then we’ll see.
To her surprise, however, FitzGilbert did not seem inclined to pursue the subject. “You’ve reviewed the tapes? Ours and Foursquare’s?”
“Yes.” Heikki poured herself a cup of tea, watching the other woman curiously. She could not decide if FitzGilbert were deliberately skirting the edges of insult, or if she were simply naturally ungracious. I’ll treat it as the latter, she thought, at least until proven otherwise. “There are a couple of questions I’d like to ask, since you were the operations director involved. If you don’t mind talking over dinner, of course.”
FitzGilbert scowled, but said, “Might as well get it over with.”
“Gracious of you,” Heikki murmured, and saw the other woman flush.
“What did you want to know?” FitzGilbert’s heavy brows were still drawn together, but she was making some effort to be conciliatory.
“The latac crew,” Heikki said. It was a little frightening, she thought vaguely, how easy it was to slip back into a linguaform she hadn’t used in almost thirty years. “Who were they, regular employees, free-lancers, or what, and how well did they know the back country?”
FitzGilbert took a deep breath, her voice becoming more professional. “They were regular flight crew, of course—Firsters, so they knew the area pretty well. The area they were supposed to be flying over, anyway! They were well off course, or either our flights or Foursquare’s would’ve found them. What more do you need to know?”
“How many aboard?”
“Five—pilot, back-up pilot, systems op, engine techs.” FitzGilbert shrugged. “The usual crew.”
“And you think, as ops director, they’re all dead?” Heikki could not keep the edge of distaste from her voice, and saw FitzGilbert wince, her color deepening again.
“They didn’t walk out,” FitzGilbert said, in a voice too harsh to be anything but false. “Either they were part of a planned sabotage, or they’re dead.”
Maybe I underestimated you, Heikki thought, and let her own voice become conciliatory. “What do you think the odds are? When I was on Iadara, Lo-Moth was well-respected. People didn’t try things like that.”
FitzGilbert looked down at her emptied plate. “I don’t know.”
“You’re the ops director,” Heikki said. “They were your people.”
“They were Firsters, I told you. And I’m not.” FitzGilbert’s voice was deceptively matter-of-fact. “I don’t know what they’d do for me. No, I’d’ve thought, that lot wouldn’t be in on a hijack—but you know as well as I do that’s the way things are done, ninety percent of the time.”
Heikki nodded. “I know. And you’re saying you don’t think this crew would’ve gone along with that?”
FitzGilbert shook her head. “No.”
“So we’ll work on that assumption, anyway,” Heikki said, and saw FitzGilbert’s face ease slightly. “FoursSquare’s tapes don’t seem to be much use. I’d rather work from the original material you have—fresh copies, if possible. We might be able to pick up something they missed.”
“I’ll see to it,” FitzGilbert said. She glanced down at her emptied plate, pushed it aside, grimacing. “If you’ll excuse me?” It was hardly a question, despite the faint rising inflection.
Heikki nodded as automatically, and turned her attention to her own plate. She did not look up until she heard the door sigh shut behind the other woman. Then, sighing, she reached for the shadowscreen that sat in the middle of the table, and ran her fingers across the surface, getting the feel of the controls. The media wall flashed and shifted, until at last she’d found the chronodisplay: two hours until the FTL run. She killed the image, leaving the wall blank, and leaned back in her chair. Not much point in going back to her own cabin yet—there was always the chance that either Djuro or Nkosi would show up—but there didn’t seem to be much use in staying, either. She pushed aside her almost untouched dinner, poured herself a second cup of tea, and curled her fingers around the warmed ceramic cylinder.
And what am I supposed to make of FitzGilbert? she demanded silently, staring at the other woman’s empty plate. I wish to hell I knew if she was meaning to be insulting, or if she’s just inept. Still, I think she did care that the latac crew is—probably—dead, which is one thing in her favor…. She put the thought aside, and reached for the plates. After a moment’s search, she found the disposal chute and slipped them in, hardly hearing the machinery whir up to speed to return scraps and plastic plates to reusable components. I’ll leave things as they are, Heikki thought, and hope we don’t have to work too closely with Dam’ FitzGilbert.
Back in her cabin, Heikki settled herself on her bunk, propping her workboard in front of her, but she could not seem to concentrate on the preliminary search pattern she had mapped out before leaving EP7. Her eyes kept straying to the chronodisplay, its numbers moving inexorably toward the time of translation. She kept at it, doggedly, but knew her work was worthless. When the buzzer finally sounded at the half-hour mark, she switched off her board and set it aside, then stretched out unhappily on her bunk. After a moment’s hesitation, she reached for her remote, and ran her fingers over the shadowscreen until the console’s main screen was tied into the display net. As was customary on passenger ships, the captain had tied the display to part of the visual security system; the picture shifted slowly, and at random intervals, from one corridor or working compartment to another. In the control room, glimpsed only briefly before the duty tech looked up at the camera, frowned, and cut it from the circuit, the ship’s full astrogation team hunched over the consoles, comparing the readings from the buoys at the edge of the Exchange Point’s parent system with the numbers already plugged into their equations. The picture wandered then through the corridors, catching a steward manhandling a balky emergency suit back into its locker, then switching to the special-cargo hold, where a woman in a flat grey cap was running a mass pulser over the last layer of crates. One view showed only indistinct figures crossing the corridor, just out of the camera’s circle of focus: the system stayed with the shot for what seemed an interminable time.
