Starliner(86)

As for Ran—it didn't seem like very long since he'd been in the same business. The intervals between changes had been longer, though, because tramps weren't crewed like luxury liners.

The machinery room had a flat-screen communicator. It was live with a pattern of fluorescent static until the lifeboat fired in the next bay. Hiram Kneale's dark face appeared, wearing a smile that could have been carved in granite. "Congratulations, Mr. Colville," the commander said.

"Wanda's end is all right?" Ran asked. "Ah, Ms. Holly's?"

"Wanda's end is just fine," Kneale said with the smile broadening. "Go ahead and tell our Nevasan friends the score. Bridge will connect you to the talk-between-ships laser."

"Me, sir?" Ran said in surprise. "Shouldn't it be you—or Captain Kanawa?"

The corridors of the Boat Deck began to hiss with the shoes and voices of passengers released from the lifeboats. No one had been assigned to the two bays on either side of 111 and of 67, but some passengers shuffled past the machinery room on their way to lift shafts. Most of them were complaining.

"It was your idea, Ran," Kneale said. "Your bright idea, I'm very thankful to say."

Ran shrugged. "All right," he said. "Bridge, TBS to lifeboats six-seven and one-one-one."

The flat screen split vertically to display the backs of Mohacks' and Babanguida's heads on the separate sides. Beyond the two ratings were long ranks of angry men and women, clamped into their lifeboat seats by the restraint system. The passengers were bellowing in fury.

"Mohacks!" Ran shouted to get the crewman's attention. "Babanguida! You're all right?"

The ratings turned with grins that mirrored one another, though there was no direct communication between the two lifeboats.

"You bet, Mr. Colville," Mohacks said. "How's Babanguida doing?"

"You keep your part of the bargain," said Babanguida, "and you don't have to worry about me. Hey, Mohacks hasn't stepped on his dick, has he?"

"You're both fine," Ran said, responding to both expressions of concern. "And your bonuses have been credited to your accounts at the Trident offices on Tellichery. You'll have enough to live on until we pick you up on the next trip."

Mohacks held a compact machine pistol which he should not have had, either aboard the Empress or on the lifeboat he was conning. It looked like one of the weapons lying around after the firefight on Calicheman.

Babanguida didn't have a gun—well, he probably did have a gun, but it wasn't visible to the communicator's pick-up lens. Instead, the tall black rating held an incendiary grenade in his left hand. He'd pulled the safety pin, and he held the spoon down with the tip of one finger.

"You don't know how I plan to live, sir," Mohacks said with a chuckle.

"The hell with the bonus," Babanguida said simultaneously. "I'm looking at the amnesty for any little misunderstandings I might've been mixed up in while I've shipped with Trident."

Babanguida was grinning, but Ran Colville had no reason to doubt the sincerity of the statement. Quite the contrary. That was why he'd chosen, and Commander Kneale had approved, the two Third Watch ratings as helmsmen for the lifeboats that would be launched. Mohacks and Babanguida had the balls to do just about anything, and the brains to get away with it. The proof of the latter point was the fact they were both out of jail.

"Let me attend to the rest of this," Ran said. "I don't suppose you can move the screen so more of the passengers can see me?"

The ratings couldn't, but they squeezed themselves against the curve of the hull to keep from blocking the lifeboat displays.

"If I may have your attention?" Ran said, then waited until the angry passengers quieted. On Lifeboat 67, that required a crisp order from a middle-aged Nevasan who was listed on the passenger manifest as a mining engineer. He looked tough enough to chew tunnels through solid rock.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Ran continued, "you are in orbit around Tellichery. Your helmsmen will land you at the Carnatica Reservation as soon as the Empress of Earth enters sponge space, which we will do momentarily."

He nodded, marking a stage in his discussion. "On behalf of Trident Starlines," he continued, "I apologize to any of you who are genuine passengers. Unfortunately, the bulk of your ninety-six fellows are members of a hijack team employed by a government in contravention of the laws of war and those of Federated Earth, under whose flag this vessel sails."

Lifeboat 111 rumbled with low-voiced threats until Mohacks waggled the muzzle of his machine pistol toward the faces of those who were being particularly vehement. On 67, the "mining engineer" shouted, "I protest! This is a libel against me and my planet!"