Grayson Sontang in Space Ch. 03

She was chaffing at resisting the urge to run the table. She didn't dare attract extra attention to herself, but she knew Hendon would be suspicious if she didn't end up with the most chips. She felt like she was walking a tightrope and it was actually way harder than just winning, especially because she wanted to take Goldstone and Hackner's money. Well, and maybe Hendon's, except he was probably her greatest challenge at the table so she wasn't holding out too much hope there. By midnight, Sip, Evans and Bogart were down, but not by too much. Hendon was comfortably ahead, and she was pleased as she managed to meet her reputation without being so far ahead as to raise thoughts of cheating. Unfortunately, Goldstone and Hackner were now throwing real cash into the pots, betting carelessly as she had predicted, counting on that one big win. She rolled her eyes at the Siriun currency. Lot of good that would do her anywhere else in the galaxy. When they finally finished their second glass of brandy and asked for a third, Grayson actually tried to dissuade them, even though she was on her fourth. When they got insistent, she looked to Hendon for support, but he only shrugged, so she handed over the bottle.

Their play went even further downhill and she was pleased to see that the others on Hendon's team were hovering around break even by the end of another hour. She suggested calling it quits then, but was resoundingly outvoted, and they played on for another hour, until Goldstone and Hackner had run out of walking-around cash as well as chips. The Tantalean brandy went a long way to taking the edge off their losses and they were quite jovial as the party finally broke up. She didn't know if they would feel the same way in the morning, but Hendon's team was well-pleased with themselves. She had no idea if Sip was. She did notice, though, that she had gotten use to the smell and to the gravelly voice of the hairy humanoid. Even Bogart finally acknowledged her presence, thanking her for all her tips. But it was Hendon that took her arm as she left the rec room to head for her quarters.

"So why would an expert poker player throw away four tens," he asked quietly as the others faded away to their various sleeping areas.

"Must have been drinking brandy or something," she said, annoyed that she hadn't seen him peeking at her cards when he gathered them for the next deal.

"How does someone with your ego throw away a chance to flip off a whole room full of men that piss her off? You could have ended that game hours ago. Right?"

She stopped dead and turned to him. "What do you care? Seriously, why the hell do you care?"

"Because there is a reason for everything you do. And I want to know what the reason for losing was."

"I didn't lose. Weren't you there?"

"Bullshit! Evans and Bogart were totally outclassed. Sip barely knew how to play. They all should have been out in the first hour. The SecTeam should have been out of chips and money by the second."

"Is that what you intended?" she demanded. "Take them for everything just so you could have a play-off with me? Hell of a way to treat your team."

"No. But it should have been what you intended. And were perfectly capable of accomplishing."

Grayson threw her hands in the air. "Hard as it is for you to believe, I actually like Evans and Bogart. And I have nothing against Sip. He or she hasn't broken anything on my ship yet and that makes him or her all right in my book. Why did you invite me if you expected me to beat them to a pulp?"

"To see if you would."

She stared at him, then shook her head in confusion. "What? Weren't you just accusing me of cheating by not wiping them out?"

"I told you. It's the reason I'm interested in. Your ego would have demanded that you win. Something more important than your ego was at play. You controlled that whole game from start to finish. You determined how much each person ended up with. You wasted some of your precious Tantalean brandy, supposedly to make sure the SecTeam would lose. I figure that was for my benefit, because you certainly didn't need it. Bogart told me you described their tells for him. Or maybe it was so they wouldn't mind losing?" he guessed. "So back to the original question. Why?"

"Maybe I just decided you were right. Sometimes it's not a good idea to antagonize people who have the power to hurt you." She tried to retrieve her arm from his grip, but he wasn't in a mood to let go and she wasn't wild about testing her fighting skills against him, especially given their unequal alcohol imbibement.

He just laughed. "Lady, you live to antagonize people. I bet you can count on one hand the number of bars you've been in where you didn't start a fight."

"I don't always start them," she protested petulantly.

"No. Sometimes you manipulate others into starting them. Like you manipulated Bogart. You figured he was the weakest player, so you took him aside and schooled him."

"In more ways than one," she countered, then mentally smacked herself. Hendon was right about one thing, she loved antagonizing him.

"You know," he said thoughtfully. "I've been giving it a lot of consideration. I figure that any 'trader' who was offered the kind of money that you were, let alone jacking it up to triple, and who was running empty, and who had nothing to hide, would jump at the chance to make such a short, easy run, even in Siriun Sector. That's not even considering what can be picked up real cheap to run out of the sector with. Yet we had to drag you kicking and screaming. So that leads me to just one conclusion. You have something to hide. Not too surprising. The only question left, is, what. At first, I figured it was contraband. A couple of bottles of brandy certainly do not rise to that threshold. Maybe a hidden hold I haven't found yet.

"But at the game tonight, I think I finally figured it out. See, I'm not as smart or clever as you. I get to things in a slow, plodding way. But I like to think that I still get there eventually. And what I got to, is that there is some connection between you and the Siriuns, specifically, the Siriuns on this ship. You've been avoiding them like the plague. Then you run headlong into that confrontation this morning, on impulse, and go all freaky on me afterward."

"Freaky?" she demanded. "You haven't begun to see freaky."

"That's my concern," he pointed out. "You... were not you, at that game tonight."

"You've never played poker with me. You have no idea..."

"I know you win. Handily. I know you lack patience. Dragging out a game like that is not your style. Giving away tells is not your style. I strongly suspect that giving away Tantalean brandy unnecessarily is not your style. Throwing away a winning hand is not your style. Letting Confeds walk away from the table with money left is not your style. That leads me to the loose end. The Siriuns.

"Your records indicate you've never been in Siriun Sector. Siriuns aren't big on travel outside the sector. So, it begs the question. How did it come about that you have a problematic relationship with Siriuns? Given that you've all but admitted to being a spacer, although that, too, is not in your records, it stands to reason that your acquaintance with Siriun Sector occurred during those years, under a different name. Perhaps a different face."

"I'll tell you what," she snapped. "When you figure it all out, you let me know. In the meantime, I'm going to get some sleep because I have a jump to make tomorrow." She tugged again, hoping to free her arm.

He studied her in a detached way that was more eerie than anger would have been, before finally releasing her. She backed away a couple of steps before turning and following the bridgework around to her quarters. Once in her bedroom, she doublechecked the manual lock before sprawling on her bed and staring at the ceiling. Despite the fact that she had to be up early in the morning, she was determined to have a plan for dealing with Hendon before she slept that night. She had misjudged him, thinking it would be easy to distract him. In reality, he was proving to be almost as tenacious as she was, and that was a problem. They were too much alike. She wasn't used to dealing with people that were like her. That was why Fogg set her teeth on edge.

Something in her mind began to click. She had been able to con Fogg because his ego made him believe he couldn't be conned. And she had conned him by feeding his ego, letting him believe he had seduced her. Hendon had mentioned her ego after the game. He saw her the same way she had seen Fogg. If Hendon was so much like her, wouldn't he have an ego that refused to believe she could con him? Wasn't that exactly the point he was trying to get across to her after the game. That she wasn't fooling him? Why else would he go to the trouble of explaining his thought processes to her if not to show her how smart he was? He was trying to get her to fold, bluffing her by hinting at his hand. But Grayson had her own secret ploy. If you're losing the game, change games. She smiled as she finally allowed herself to drift off to sleep.

****

Grayson was rubbing her eyes as she entered the bridge. Evans was ensconced in the control chair, studying the simulation that Hal was displaying on the main screen. The wormhole appeared as a swirling vortex, looking more like a whirlpool to be avoided than something to be aimed for. "Hey, good game," he called to her, though obviously distracted by the task at hand.

She grunted in response. "Hal, coffee and some plastic something or other for breakfast." She glanced at the monitors on the command console. Hal was getting good at guessing which information she would want prior to a jump. "There's a couple of freighters out there," she told Evans, unnecessarily. "Can you pull info from the Feds on them."

"Already done," he assured her, tapping a key to shoot the information to her screen.

"Oh, damn," she moaned. "One of them is carrying coffee from Earth. What I wouldn't give to have a teleporter like in the sci-fi movies."

He laughed sympathetically. "I've heard nothing else is the same. Aren't you from there?"

"Yeah," she lied. "It's been way too long."

"Why?" he asked, actually curious. "I mean, you can go pretty much wherever you want as a trader."

"Not that easy," she said, retrieving her tray from the dumbwaiter. "Hal, what is this on my plate?"

"Eggs," the computer replied. "The refrige was stocked with a supply of liquid eggs."

"Not that frozen, reconstituted, dehydrated, synthetic shit?"

"Liquified, but otherwise the product of domesticated, Earth-originated fowl."

"Oh, my stars!" she exclaimed, taking a bite before she even got back to her console. "Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, trading. If you're going to make it as a trader, you need to work the systems that are in the market for pretty much anything ya got. That means the ones farthest from Earth and most widespread. That means either the outer arm of the forespiral or the aftspiral. It's a long, unprofitable way to Earth from either of those."

"But think of the demand for Earth items!"

Grayson snorted. "Number one, how much do you think I could carry on this bucket? I can't begin to compete with the freighters. Number two, the outer arms are the poorest systems in the galaxy. Nobody would be able to afford what I brought."

"I guess there's a lot to take into consideration if you're a trader," he conceded.

"Oh, Honey, I haven't even started on the cost of hydrogen for the engines, oxygen backups, non-perishable food. Do you have any idea what it's like to eat the same green stuff day after day because it's what your ship's plants can produce? I invest big bucks in food coloring just so I don't have to eat something green day in and day out."

"Don't you get homesick?" he asked.

She paused thoughtfully. "I miss certain things. But there are a lot of things I don't miss." She was talking both about Earth and her real home planet, but he didn't need to know that.

"Yeah, I get that. I miss family most, my wife and kids. You have family back home?"

Grayson opened her mouth to give her pat answer, but then paused. "No," she said quietly, thinking of Earth. As much as she loved the planet, there was no one there she thought of as family. And on her home planet, there was no one she wanted to acknowledge as family. "I guess I'm creating family as I go from planet to planet. People I care about, want to return to, spend time with. I suppose that's why I tend to run pretty much the same circuit. Those worlds have become my home."

"Nice," he said, nodding.

"So, any info on the hole? No glitches?"

"Nope. Clean jumps."

"It can't be that easy. Not where Sirius Sector is involved. Are those freighters coming or going?"

"They are headed into the sector. Like you were saying, this is the straightest jump into Sirius itself, so it makes sense."

Grayson stared at the screen. She shook her head. "Something feels wrong. I'm going to slow down a notch, wait for a report back from those freighters after they've jumped."

"I don't understand. What feels wrong?"

She took a sip of her coffee, and the caffeine went straight to her brain, like a light being turned on. "For one thing, coffee from Earth going in to Sirius. Coffee grows on Sirius Prime. Not as good, but close enough that a freighter isn't going to haul tons in. Plus, we're on the opposite side from Earth. Shit, shit, shit. Hal, vertical flip, hit the brakes at ten gees. Now, now, now!" She grabbed the arm of her chair and clutched at her cup of coffee, sucking on the opening as she stared at the sim.

"Should I alert someone?" Evans asked.

"Who's going to listen? We're in Fed space. They don't give a damn what you have to say and they give way less than a damn what I have to say. Add to that the fact that we'd have to say we're suspicious about a coffee shipment? They'd be shitting themselves laughing so hard."

"We need to alert someone," he said, nothing if not by the book.

"Then contact your Confed people and tell them to watch that freighter coming through. But not get too close," she added. "Put him through, Hal."

He had just completed the code-like message when Hendon came on the bridge. "Are we decelerating?" he asked.

"Thank you for the eggs," Grayson said.

"Answer my question!" he demanded.

"Yes. Thank you for the eggs."

"What the hell is going on?" he asked, directing the question to Evans.

"There is a suspicious freighter. I accepted Sontang's recommendation to slow until the freighter cleared the jump. I relayed our concerns to Confed."

"Our concerns?" Hendon asked, incredulous.

"Yes, Sir. The freighter reports that it is carrying coffee. That is not a usual product for Sirius Prime."

"And you know this how?" Hendon asked, his voice low.

"Because I told him," Grayson interjected. "And you know damn well that it's true, mister customs man. Sirius Prime exports coffee. Crappy coffee, but nonetheless. Either that freighter is lying about what it is carrying, or it's lying about what it's carrying. Pick one."

"So you think it's smuggling something?" he asked, with more than a hint of sarcasm.

"No. I think it's going to blow..." On the main screen simulation, the wormhole suddenly blinked out of existence. Grayson gestured at the screen. "... up the wormhole. Hal, evasive maneuver Epsilon thirty-five gees. Go, go, go. Ship comm. Alert, brace for impact!" She appeared to be counting, then said, "Five, four, three, two, one, impact." And the ship shook from stem to stern as the engines and maneuvering exhausts fired, and an energy field blasted out in all directions from what used to be a wormhole shoving the ship away from the vicinity at nearly the speed of light.

Curiously, the blast of hydrogen exhaust from the ship's engine split the energy flow around the ship, protecting it from the force and actually slowing the velocity below the speed of the blast rather than adding to an unfathomable, and unsurvivable light speed.

"Hal, I need a sim," Grayson called out through gritted teeth.

"Parameters?" the computer asked.

"Five hundred AU, ship centered. Sim the blast field." She stared at the screen. On the two-dimensional display, the blast field displayed as a purplish halo, the densest center of which had just passed beyond the Breathless Dragon. She knew in three dimensions it would be more like a hollow sphere. "Send recording, past twenty minutes, on Fed Emergency channel."

"Understood, sent."

"Will it get through?" she asked.

"Indeterminant. Supralight transmissions appear to be experiencing interference."

"So, some of that energy is supralight. Damn. Try every ten minutes till you receive confirmation. At some point it should disperse enough to let the message through."

"Grayson?" Evans said. She glanced at him. He was staring at the screen. "That other freighter. It's just gone."

"They wouldn't have known what hit them," she said softly. "New sim, Hal. I want to see every star system within one thousand AU." A sphere appeared on the screen and slowly rotated. "Any intelligent life on those?" There were only a couple of systems displayed.

"Nearest system with intelligent life is four thousand six hundred and forty-three AU."

"So about twenty-five, twenty-six days. Can you calculate if solar winds will deflect the blast field?"

"Incomplete data suggests eighty-seven percent probability of ninety-three percent deflection for that system. Supralight energy will get through but should only interfere with transmissions."

"Okay, give me the sim with the blast display again. Are we out of the worst of it?" She squinted at the screen. The ship appeared to be at the inner edge of the halo now.

"Some sublight energy is trailing the blast zone."

"What about particles, dust, anything like that?"

"There is no matter in a wormhole," the computer answered patiently.

"There was a freighter," Evans muttered.

"The mass of the freighter was converted to energy," Hal replied to the unspoken question.

"Cut engines to one gee. I want as much data as you can gather, Hal."

There was a groan behind her as the gee force and grav field adjusted to one another. Grayson spun her chair around and almost flew out of it before the vying forces settled. Hendon was laying with his back against the wall under the dumbwaiter. She had forgotten all about him. She leapt across the intervening space as soon as the grav field allowed. He was groggily pushing himself up and she pushed him back down. "Lay still. Let me see if you broke anything. Didn't they teach you what 'brace for impact' means?"

"Your count was off," he muttered.

"Evans, can you check on the others. Hal, I'm going to need nav calculations stat. At this speed we're going to run into something sooner rather than later." She looked back at Hendon. "I don't see any blood. Were you knocked out?"

"Just for a few seconds, I think," he rolled cautiously onto his back. "Some aspirin and I'll be fine."

She shaded his eyes from the overhead light, watching his pupils. "Good thing you're so hard headed. Arms and legs all move? Toes wiggle?"

"Fancy yourself a doctor?" he asked, sitting up with a groan.

"If we were on a freighter I'd tell you to either die or get your ass back to work."

"I should go help Evans," he said, struggling to his feet.

"You should go sit down. I'll get you some of Hal's coffee. That'll cure anything." He obeyed, which surprised the hell out of Grayson. But then he was requesting Hal open a comm to Evans before she could order coffee for him. Hal, though, bless his core processor, had been eavesdropping and delivered cups for both of them as Hendon listened to Evans report. It seemed that Bogart, Het and Sip had been on their assigned cargo floors and had reasonable control over the human cargo because of the upcoming jump. They immediately got everyone down on the floor when they heard her warning, and as a result, although there were a large number of bumps and bruises, there were very few serious injuries. Grayson breathed a sigh of relief as she pulled a bottle of pain killers from a drawer in her console and delivered them, along with the coffee, to Hendon. She was feeling a little worse for wear herself as she returned to her own seat.