Finity's End - a Union-Alliance Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.
    "I don't truly ask your business or your destination at the moment," she said. "I don't ask why you've drawn what you have from the bank. That's Mallory's business or it isn't and I won't put you in the position of lying to me. But I'll tell you what's no news to you, and something
we
have to deal with. We both know that Union is getting past the Treaty. What may be news is that there are fourteen more ships pending construction. Union is building ships to put us out of business, and it's doing it while we bicker." Having mapped out her arguments for her ship in advance, oh, for sleepless nights and seven years, she tapped a finger on the table surface to make her points and ignored all logic of why a Quen ship should be first.
    "I can name you the ships," she said. "I can tell you which shipyards." She'd almost lay odds that
Finity
could name them, too. But James Robert gave her not an iota of help or encouragement, the old