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  “No, it isn’t,” she agreed. “But maybe even just a few people with the right skills, doing the necessary things while everything is still in flux and everybody else is still making up their minds, could influence a lot about what is happening out here. That would be a new start worth making, wouldn’t it?”

  He looked at her again, skeptical. “A team effort? I have to admit that my sole success in life so far involved that. What things are you considering necessary?”

  “I don’t know exactly. The question is, Lochan . . . can I call you Lochan?”

  “Sure.”

  “Can I be personal?” Carmen asked. “You’ve told me that you know what failure is, on a personal level. I’ve seen it on a planetary level. Experiencing failure is important.”

  “I’m glad to know it served a purpose,” Lochan said, sounding half-amused and half-bitter.

  “People who’ve never failed, never beaten their heads against something that won’t be fixed, tend to think that their own success in whatever they’ve tried is due only to them,” Carmen said. “They don’t realize the external factors that mess with the best plans, and they don’t realize how aspects of themselves can contribute to problems.”

  The frown was back, causing Carmen to wonder if she had pushed Lochan too far. “You haven’t talked to Mele Darcy?”

  “No. About what?”

  “Never mind.” Lochan smiled wryly. “Let’s just say I see your point. I know how things can go wrong when everything you’re doing should be right. But even two people who understand that wouldn’t have much influence.”

  “Not back on Old Earth . . . or Mars. Or in the Old Colonies,” Carmen agreed. “Once a system gets fixed in place, all settled, it doesn’t want to move, it doesn’t want to change. But if you can catch it while everything is still in motion and make a few small shoves, maybe you can change how it settles out.”

  He grinned. “A little like Newton’s Laws of Motion applied to human organizations? That’s a weird idea.” Lochan Nakamura paused to think. “It might have a lot of truth to it, too. It can be that way with people, right? Nudge them in the right direction before they make up their minds. But what does that have to do with me?”

  Carmen chose her words carefully. “You know how it was. Old Earth kept the law in space for the Old Colonies. What happened in Vestri couldn’t have happened a few decades ago because without the jump drives places like Vestri that are just on the way to somewhere else wouldn’t even have been visited, and because if anyone set up something like that Old Earth would send someone to deal with it. It wasn’t an empire, more like a very loose association of star systems that let Old Earth do the heavy lifting when it came to keeping the peace.”

  “That’s true of down,” Lochan objected. “Up, they cut themselves off. They don’t want anything to do with Old Earth or the other colonies.”

  “Right. So now humanity is expanding very quickly, all of it apparently down, and there’s nothing keeping any law in those regions.”

  “I don’t know enough about it,” Lochan Nakamura admitted again.

  Carmen sighed heavily. “I’ve been trying to find out more about it. There’s so much information, so many new colonies springing up in new star systems. And the amount of information lag varies all over the place. Some of the data are only a month or two old, and other bits are several months old or older.”

  “Is there anything about Apulu?” Lochan asked.

  “That’s a good example,” she said. “There’s almost nothing about Apulu in the files. They registered a colonization plan with the Old Earth authority that people are still registering with, I guess out of habit, and that’s all there is. Apulu is keeping real quiet about itself. Then there’s, um, Scatha. Scatha Star System reads like a perfect little utopia from what it has reported to other places. But then I find information about Scatha buying surplus warships and ground weapons from Old Colonies, and that doesn’t sound quite so much like a utopia, does it?”

  Carmen gestured widely. “And there have been some colonization expeditions that just disappeared, apparently going so far down and out that we’ve lost contact with them.”

  “Why would anybody go that far?” Lochan wondered.

  “I don’t know. A few of those ships were owned outright by business leaders who made no secret about being tired of what they called interference by governments. Maybe they wanted to be able to operate without laws and regulations that restricted their options.” She nodded to herself as a memory came. “There used to be things on Old Earth and on Mars called company towns. A big corporation owned everything, the houses and the stores and the businesses, and everybody worked for the corporation in one way or another. Mars still has places like that though the owners could be considered more like gangs than corporations. Something like that setup could be what the people who went very far out wanted.”

  “A whole planet for their playground? I wonder what promises they gave their workers to get them to buy into that?”

  “I don’t know,” Carmen said. “They went so far out that it will be a while before the expansion of new settlements encounters them and finds out what came of their experiment in corporate rule.”

  Lochan shook his head. “We all wanted some form of freedom from what we’re leaving. But we’re also leaving behind laws and rules that protected people like us and the workers who took their families to those corporate colonies. What the hell is happening?”

  “Things that are going to shake out for centuries,” Carmen said.

  A man at the next table got up and glared at her. “I couldn’t help but overhear. You’re trying to make a case for some great landlord to keep us all in line, aren’t you? We’ve had enough of that, on Old Earth and on the Old Colonies. My people are finally going to have our own home, at a star we’ve already named Eire. And we’ll thank you to keep your hands away from our home!”

  Carmen, having dealt with gang enforcers as a little girl, gave the man a flat, unintimidated look in return. “And what if someone else breaks into your home? What will you do?”

  “Tell them to leave off, or fight if we must!”

  “Fight? With what? And how well did that work on Old Earth when it was just you by yourselves? Your home was never conquered?”

  The man’s glare held a moment longer, then he shook his head. “You know nothing of our history.”

  “I know more than you think,” Carmen said, having identified where he had come from on Earth by his way of speaking. “Would you be a happier people with a happier history if you’d had strong friends to call on for help when invaders struck? And if others had known you had such friends, would they have ever invaded?”

  He paused to think. “That depends on what price the friends demanded.”

  “A friend wouldn’t ask for more than you’d be willing to give, right?” Carmen said. “I’m not interested in trying to force anyone into anything. But it wouldn’t hurt for everyone to know who their friends are, just in case they need them. And to agree on any price before someone is in desperate need.”

  “I’ll give you that,” he said in a quieter tone. “Where are you from?”

  “Albuquerque.” If she told him the truth, he would probably walk away in disgust and check to make sure he still had his universal wallet.

  “Oh?” If he suspected the answer was misleading, he gave no sign of it. “And where are you bound?”

  “Kosatka.”

  “Kosatka? At least that’s easier to spell.” The man nodded to Carmen, then to Lochan, who had sat silently watching, before leaving the lounge.

  Lochan gave her an appraising look. “You are one cool actor. I’d hate to play cards against you.”

  She shrugged. “I’ve learned how to deal with people. But my experience in other areas is limited. I can talk one-on-one, but when it comes to groups, I’m not as good.” Carm
en rested her chin in her hand as she gazed at him. “It would be nice to have someone working with me, someone I could count on if things get too hot, who could work with groups like I work with individuals.”

  He looked down again, grimacing. “I may not be the guy you think I am.”

  “Are you the guy you think you are?”

  That brought her a smile from him. “You sound like Mele again.”

  “And that sounds like a compliment,” Carmen said.

  “It is.”

  “Are you two . . . ?”

  “No.” His smile shifted, becoming wry. “Just good enough friends to be honest with each other. You know, I learned one of the reasons politics is so ugly is because people aren’t honest with themselves. They want things, but they often don’t want to pay whatever price those things demand. So they elect people to do the unpleasant bargaining and trading and trade-offs and compromises for them. And then they look down on those doing the dirty work.”

  “You don’t think that’s fair?” Carmen asked.

  “Not if you’re one hundred percent honest as a politician,” Lochan Nakamura said. “Not if you cut the best deals you can for the people you’re representing. I know everyone thinks there are never enough politicians like that. And I can’t claim I was perfect. I made a lot of mistakes. I deserved to lose that election. But my recent experience in Vestri showed me I did learn from that, even if it did take a Marine to pound the lesson home for me. Still, if you want a partner in this stuff, you should know who you’re getting.”

  “You’re being honest with me?” Carmen asked.

  “Yeah, I’m—” He caught himself, grinning. “What kind of a politician am I?”

  “The kind I need. The kind that the new colonies may need.”

  Lochan Nakamura took a drink, then paused in the manner of someone about to attempt something new. “What are you thinking we should do? How were you planning to do things?”

  “We need to start with one of the growing colonies,” Carmen said. “Get in on the ground floor and use what we can do there as . . . as a lever! That’s why I’m going to Kosatka. It was settled about five years ago and already has a couple of cities and a scattering of towns, growing fast as new immigrants flood in and businesses serve the people and ships going farther down.”

  “Are they having trouble yet?” Lochan asked her.

  “Some sort of domestic problems, at least as of the date of the information aboard this ship, and it’s going to get worse. If we come in confident and authoritative, people looking for answers will listen.”

  “That sort of thing can be misused,” Lochan observed. “I don’t think you’re the sort to do that. Why do you think I won’t?”

  “Because someone willing to manipulate others for their own benefit wouldn’t have risked their own life helping everyone else escape from Vestri,” Carmen said.

  “How do you know what I was thinking?” Lochan insisted.

  “I know everyone was on that shuttle,” Carmen told him. “If you’d just been looking out for yourselves, you and the others could have hijacked the shuttle and left the rest of the passengers behind, instead of risking having the life support fail before everyone got rescued.”

  Lochan’s frown was back. “It never even occurred to me to leave the others behind.”

  “Yes. That’s the point. That tells me what I need to know about you.” Carmen nodded in the general direction of Mononoke’s bridge. “The captain and I spoke earlier about what happened at Vestri, and she was candid with me. Her bosses at the shipping line are getting increasingly nervous about running ships down into new colony areas. The profits are great, but the chance of major losses just keeps going up. There is going to come a point when ships like this aren’t going to be making runs anymore between the Old Colonies and new places in the down, and when that happens not only does the flood of new people into the newly established colonies like Kosatka get choked off, but so does all the trade.”

  He nodded, eyes hooded in thought. “All right. Sign me up to the, uh, team. Here’s to Kosatka and saving the . . . galaxy?”

  “This small part of it,” Carmen agreed. Before she could say anything else, one of Mononoke’s security officers approached the table.

  “Lochan Nakamura?” he asked.

  “That’s me,” Lochan confirmed. “Is there a problem?”

  “We have a passenger in confinement who gave your name as someone aboard who could vouch for her.”

  Lochan slapped his forehead. “Mele Darcy?”

  “Yes,” the officer said. “Could you come with me? The ship’s executive officer would like to speak with you before you assume responsibility for Darcy, assuming you are willing to do so.”

  “I owe her that much,” Lochan Nakamura said. “Citizen Ochoa—”

  “Carmen.”

  “Carmen, I’m sorry, but I need to see to this.”

  She nodded, thinking that this was an opportunity to learn a bit more not only about Lochan Nakamura but also Mele Darcy. “Do you mind if I come along? To provide legal advice if necessary?”

  “Would you? Thanks!”

  • • •

  About half an hour later, after a brief talk with Mononoke’s second-in-command, Lochan followed the security officer into the utilitarian part of the ship that a tiny private police force operated out of, still wondering exactly what Mele Darcy had done.

  He had also wondered how Carmen Ochoa would handle being in an environment of confinement cells and security officers. Carmen, as best he could judge, was wary, alert, and cautiously polite. Her attitude around the private cops reminded him of someone he had once known who had grown up in a high-crime area on Franklin. Was Albuquerque like that? Lochan suspected that it wasn’t, that Carmen, like his former acquaintance on Franklin, avoided mentioning wherever she had actually acquired that guarded behavior around police officers.

  It didn’t bother him. He didn’t want to be judged by his past, either. Wasn’t the whole point of going down and out to get a new start, free from the mistakes of the past?

  The officer they were following paused at one door, unlocked it, then gestured back the way they had come. “The paperwork is already processed. You can just walk out with her when you leave.”

  “Thank you,” Carmen said for both of them.

  Lochan tapped the control pad next to the door and watched it slide open. “What happened?” he called, as much to announce his presence as to ask the question.

  Mele Darcy, seated on the small bunk against the far wall, her skin and clothing bearing the marks of fighting, grinned at him. “A bunch of bums in one of the bars were making fun of Marines. I asked them politely to stop.”

  “Politely?”

  “Well, sort of politely. And then they got very insulting, and I had to defend the honor of my former comrades, right?”

  Carmen had stayed back, out of the line of Mele’s sight. Lochan leaned against the door frame, crossing his arms. “How many were there?”

  “The bums? Ten.” She paused, scrunching up her face in thought. “Maybe eleven.”

  “And you took them on by yourself?”

  “Even though I’m a former Marine, that’s still fairly even odds,” Mele explained. “So we discussed the matter among ourselves, no bystanders injured, then ship security showed up and asked me what was going on and I asked if I could finish my beer and they said sure so I did, then they arrested me. Who you got with you?”

  “Carmen Ochoa,” she called from outside the cell. “Did security arrest the other eleven in the fight?”

  “Maybe later they did,” Mele called back. “You’re that lawyer, right? Doesn’t someone have to be conscious to be arrested?”

  “I’m not a lawyer, but I think you’re correct.”

  Lochan shook his head, desperately trying not to smile at Mele�
�s story. “The ship’s officers aren’t happy. The next star system the Mononoke is going to visit is Taniwha. The executive officer told me he would really like to see you leave the ship there along with the passengers already planning to debark.”

  “Taniwha? Do you know anything about Taniwha?”

  Carmen Ochoa answered. “First settled about six years ago. They have three cities on their primary world and a completed habitat and dockyard orbiting that planet. A lot of ship traffic heading down and coming back up goes through Taniwha.”

  “It’s not a dead end, then?” Mele made a face as she thought, rubbing her jaw. “Okay.”

  “Okay?” Lochan questioned, surprised at the speed of her decision.

  “I needed to get off somewhere. I probably won’t stay at Taniwha, but it’ll give me a chance to look at my options.”

  “All right, then,” Lochan said, trying not to look disappointed. “Um . . . you’ve been released into my custody. I’m supposed to make sure you don’t get into trouble again before Taniwha.”

  Mele’s smile turned mischievous. “I could make life hard for you until then.”

  “But you won’t,” Lochan said.

  “Nah. You’re not so bad. How many days until Taniwha?”

  Carmen Ochoa called out the answer. “Three more days in jump space, then three days heading in-system before a transfer shuttle is supposed to meet us.”

  “Almost a week?” Mele scratched her head. “Staying out of trouble that long is going to be difficult. Maybe you ought to tell them to leave me in here.”

  “Mele,” Lochan said, unable to stop his smile this time. “I think if you wanted to stay out of trouble for a week, you’d manage it without breaking a sweat.”

  “You got me, boss.” Mele stood, stretching. “And thanks, uh . . .”

  “Carmen.”

  “I’ll pay you guys back for having to handle this. Are the bars still open? It’s on me.”

  “They’re serving breakfast,” Lochan said.