Chapter 155 · Nine to Five

South Three was worse than Davin had advertised.

Not physically.

Physically, it was an ordinary freight operations center occupying the upper level of a cargo concourse: long windows overlooking loading bays, rows of terminals, wall displays filled with berth assignments and arrival estimates, and enough people moving between stations to create the illusion that someone, somewhere, had the situation under control.

The illusion lasted approximately four minutes.

Corlan turned out to be a heavyset human in his forties with a shaved head, a stained vest and the distracted expression of a man who had already been interrupted six times before Eli finished introducing himself.

“Figg?”

“Horatio Figg.”

“Davin says you know freight.”

“I do.”

Corlan shoved a datapad into his hands. “Good.”

That appeared to be the interview.

Eli looked at the screen. Three vessels were highlighted in red. One had arrived eleven hours late and lost its unloading slot. One had arrived early enough to occupy a berth still assigned to another ship. The third was carrying refrigerated cargo whose transfer crew had been reassigned to deal with a medical shipment on the opposite side of the port.

Eli looked up. Corlan was already walking away. “Which one do you want me to start with?”

“All of them.”

Of course.

By the end of the first hour, Eli understood why Corlan had been willing to hire a complete stranger on Davin’s recommendation.

They were drowning.

Not catastrophically. The port still functioned. Ships landed. Cargo moved. Bills were generated. Containers eventually reached approximately the places they were supposed to reach.

But every part of the process had acquired friction.

A freighter delayed at one junction arrived six hours after its warehouse crew had gone home. Another had been rerouted through a different customs zone and arrived with documentation using codes the local system had not yet been updated to recognize. A bulk shipment of industrial lubricants occupied a storage bay reserved for machine components because somebody two shifts earlier had solved an immediate problem by creating a later one.

The entire operation had become a continuous exercise in borrowing resources from the future.

Eli recognized it instantly. He had grown up around shipping.

Vanto Shipping had possessed better software, better staffing and considerably less Imperial collapse, but the underlying mathematics had not changed. A ship occupied space. Cargo occupied space. Workers occupied hours. If any one of those arrived at the wrong time, somebody had to make the other two fit around it.

By the third hour, Corlan had stopped checking his work.

By the fifth, people had begun bringing him problems directly. “Figg, I need another pallet crew on Seven.” “Figg, customs froze container Besh-Nine.” “Figg, did you move the Tarvos shipment?”

“No. I moved the crew assigned to it.”

“Where?”

“Dock Seven.”

“Why?”

“Because Dock Seven contains sixteen tonnes of fruit that becomes worthless before the Tarvos shipment becomes late.”

There was a pause. “Oh.”

“Yes.”

The man left.

Eli looked back at the board. For approximately thirty seconds he felt almost normal.

Then his communicator vibrated. He reached for it immediately. The message contained four words. Fine. Going out now.

No name. None was needed. Eli stared at it for a moment, then typed: Check in later.

The reply arrived less than a minute afterward. Yes.

That was all.

He put the communicator away.

“Figg!”

Eli turned. Someone was waving a manifest at him from the next station. Normality over.

The shift was supposed to be nine hours.

Eli learned this because, at the end of the ninth hour, the terminal politely informed him that his scheduled work period had concluded. He stared at the notification. Around him, nobody moved.

Corlan was arguing with a warehouse supervisor over a delayed heavy hauler. Two terminals down, a woman was trying to find cold storage for a shipment nobody had expected until tomorrow. Somewhere below the operations windows, warning lights had appeared around one of the loading lanes.

Eli looked at the clock. Then at Corlan. “Am I done?”

Corlan looked genuinely confused. “What?”

“My shift.”

“Oh.” He glanced toward the board. Then toward the window. “Can you stay until we clear the Ressen arrival?”

Eli followed his gaze. A cargo ship was already settling toward the berth. “How long?”

“Hour. Maybe two.”

Eli knew what that meant. “Fine.”

“Thanks.”

Corlan disappeared again.

Two hours later, the Ressen arrival had become the Ressen unloading problem, which had become the Ressen warehouse problem, which had somehow also become a dispute over whether six containers of machine bearings belonged on Concourse Four or in temporary bonded storage.

Eli finally left South Three eleven hours and forty-three minutes after arriving.

Nobody mentioned overtime. He had already suspected nobody would.

Long hours themselves were nothing new.

Eli had grown up around a family business. When your parents owned the company, shifts were largely theoretical. There was work that needed doing, and then there was the point at which everyone became too tired to do it properly. He had watched his parents start before breakfast, stop for dinner, take a call halfway through it and disappear back into the office because a ship was late somewhere and somebody had to fix the problem. As he got older, he had done the same. Vanto Shipping had opening hours. The Vantos, considerably less so.

The Imperial Navy had been more orderly about it. Officially.

Watches existed. Duty rotations existed. Rest periods existed. Entire departments devoted considerable effort to putting those things into schedules.

They simply became less convincing the farther up the command structure you went—or the more closely you worked beside someone climbing it.

Eli had learned that very quickly.

Senior officers finished a watch and remained on the bridge because something was happening. Staff officers carried work into meals. A briefing scheduled near the end of a shift became another briefing, then a report, then a problem somebody needed solved before the next watch took over. And when your assignment involved following Thrawn through an increasingly demanding series of commands, the distinction between on duty and not currently asleep could become mostly academic.

Besides, aboard a warship there was only so far you could go.

You lived where you worked. Your quarters were a few corridors from your duty station. The mess was inside the same hull. Even when your shift ended, there was no street outside to walk down, no home to return to, no life waiting somewhere beyond the office door. If something needed doing, staying another hour rarely felt like surrendering anything except sleep.

South Three was different. Eli had somewhere else he needed to be. Even if, at present, that somewhere was a room with one bed and a missing Chiss.

The one genuine advantage of South Three was the staff cantina.

It was not good. It was, however, included. Eli had discovered this approximately three hours into the shift when another coordinator noticed him staring at a vending machine and told him not to waste money. “Badge gets you one meal.”

“I don’t have a badge.”

The woman pointed at his temporary work credential. “That counts.”

It did.

Dinner had been a thick grain stew with vegetables, strips of meat and enough bread to make the entire meal substantially more useful than attractive. Eli ate all of it.

Then, on the way out, he noticed the trays of food being cleared from the late shift. “Can I take something?”

The cantina worker looked at him.

“For later.”

Another look.

Eli prepared to explain. Instead, she pointed toward a stack of disposable containers. “Anything from that tray. It gets dumped in twenty minutes.”

Eli looked. Stewed beans. Sausages. Roasted vegetables. A little sliced meat. “Seriously?”

“Take it or don’t.”

He took it. Quite a lot of it.

The boarding-house room was dark when he returned.

Eli opened the door quietly. The bed was empty. For a second, despite the messages, Eli felt an immediate irrational spike of worry. Then he saw the cup beside the sink.

Not his. Stent had been there.

The room contained almost nothing, which made changes easy to notice. The cover on the bed had been disturbed and straightened again. One of the towels had been used. The little waste container held the wrapper from something Eli had not eaten.

He checked his communicator.

A message had arrived twenty-six minutes earlier. Returned briefly. Going out again. I am well.

Eli read it twice. Then set the food container on the narrow shelf.

He typed: Food here. Eat it.

He considered adding something else. Decided against it.

Then added: Not optional.

The reply did not come.

Eli took off his boots, sat on the edge of the bed and discovered that sitting had been a mistake because his body immediately interpreted it as permission to stop functioning.

He lay down. Just for a minute.

When Eli woke, the room was still dark. His neck hurt. One leg had gone numb where he had fallen asleep partly on top of the cover. For several disorienting seconds he did not know what time it was.

Then he remembered. Port. Missing ship. Job. Stent.

He checked the communicator. One message. Fine. Back later. Sent a little over two hours earlier.

Eli rubbed both hands over his face and sat up.

He had another shift in less than an hour. “Kriff.”

There was no refresher in the room, so getting ready meant pulling his boots back on, straightening yesterday’s clothes as much as possible and making a quick trip down the corridor to the shared facilities.

By the time he came back, the room looked exactly as it had before he left it: one bed, one narrow shelf, nothing else.

Eli collected his communicator and headed for the door. It opened before he reached it.

Stent stood on the other side. For a second they simply looked at each other. Stent looked tired.

Not badly. Not injured, as far as Eli could tell. Just worn down around the edges in a way Eli had rarely seen on him. “You’re back.”

“Briefly.”

Eli stepped aside to let him in. “I’m leaving.”

“I know.”

“You eaten?”

Stent glanced toward the shelf. Eli had left a container there before falling asleep. It was empty. “Yes.”

Good.

That was one useful piece of information.

Eli studied him for another moment. “Anything?”

“Nothing reliable.”

“You’re going out again?”

“After I sleep.”

“How long?”

Stent looked at the bed. “Two or three hours.”

Eli nodded. “There’ll be more food tonight.”

“You do not need to—”

“I know.”

Stent stopped.

Eli adjusted the communicator at his belt. “Keep sending messages.”

“I have been.”

“Keep doing it.”

“I will.”

That was enough.

Eli stepped into the corridor. Behind him, Stent closed the door. For the next several hours, at least, Eli knew exactly where he was. That helped more than it should have.

The second day established the pattern.

Work. Wait. Check communicator. Work more.

The port had discovered that Horatio Figg was competent, which meant the port immediately rewarded him with additional responsibilities. Corlan gave him control of two arrival boards instead of one. Then three.

Someone discovered Eli could read old Imperial freight codes without consulting the reference system. Someone else discovered he understood military-style load priorities well enough to untangle a mixed cargo manifest that had been confusing the afternoon crew for two days.

Nobody asked why. Family shipping business covered a remarkable number of sins.

At lunchtime his communicator vibrated. Fine. West side. Nothing useful yet.

Eli read it while standing beside a terminal and eating bread with one hand. He replied: Define west side.

Nothing. Five minutes. Ten. Then: Not relevant.

Eli stared at the message. It was perhaps the most Stent answer possible. He typed: It becomes relevant if I have to come find you.

A longer delay. Near old maintenance district. Staying within comm range.

Better. Not good. Better.

Eli put the communicator away before he could become distracted enough to make a routing error.

That shift lasted twelve hours.

The third lasted eleven.

On the fourth, a grain carrier came in six hours late with damaged repulsors, a refrigeration failure closed half of one storage block, and two separate cargo crews failed to report for the evening rotation.

Eli worked thirteen hours and twenty minutes.

Corlan paid him for nine. Eli knew because he checked. Then checked again.

He stood at the payroll terminal staring at the logged hours. Nine. Scheduled shift. Not actual attendance. He considered complaining. He also considered the boarding-house account attached to Davin’s name, the staff meals, the fact that he was receiving his first payment, and the small but critical detail that he needed the job more than Corlan needed fairness.

Eli closed the payroll screen. For now. He understood exploitation when he saw it. He had simply not expected to experience it from this side of the desk.

The food kept disappearing.

That became the most reliable indication that Stent was still operating somewhere in the port. Eli brought back whatever the cantina would let him take at the end of shift: stew, bread, roasted vegetables, fried grain cakes, once an unexpectedly good piece of fish.

He would leave it in the room. When he returned later, or woke before the next shift, some or all of it would be gone. Sometimes the container had been washed. Sometimes Stent had left it beside the sink with the lid loosely resting on top.

Once Eli found half a sausage still there and experienced enough irritation to send: Eat properly.

The answer came nine minutes later. I did.

Eli looked at the half sausage. This disagrees.

A pause. I was not hungry.

Eli typed several responses. Deleted all of them. Eventually: There will be more tonight.

Stent replied: Understood.

That was as close as Eli was going to get.

They saw surprisingly little of each other.

Once, Eli woke in the middle of his sleep period because the door opened.

Stent came in quietly. Eli raised his head.

The room was too dark to see much beyond silhouette. “You okay?”

“Yes.”

Stent sounded tired. Not injured.

At least not obviously. Eli let his head fall back to the pillow. “There’s food.”

“I saw it.”

“Good.”

Stent removed his boots. A moment later the mattress dipped beside Eli. The room had only one bed, and by then neither of them had enough energy left to maintain any theoretical system of turns.

Stent lay down on top of the cover. Eli was asleep again before he heard whether Stent pulled it back.

When Eli woke four hours later, Stent was gone. The food was gone too.

On the shelf sat a message written through the local communicator link. Fine. Back later.

Eli stared at it while fastening his boots. He had begun to hate the word fine. It contained no information whatsoever. But every time it appeared, he breathed easier.

So he accepted it. For now.

By the fifth day, Eli had stopped asking how long his shift was supposed to last. The answer remained nine hours. The reality had become something else.

That afternoon, a convoy diverted from a closed junction arrived almost simultaneously with three scheduled freighters, one of which had been waiting long enough that its captain was threatening to dump the cargo in the access lane and leave. Two loading crews were already working overtime. A warehouse supervisor had somehow lost twenty-two pallets of machine components inside a building specifically designed to prevent that sort of thing.

Eli stayed.

At eleven hours, Corlan asked if he could finish reconciling the redirected manifests. At twelve, a heavy hauler arrived with a damaged cargo lock and blocked a berth. At thirteen, nobody asked him anything anymore. They simply assumed he was still working. By the time Eli finally left South Three, he had been there for almost fourteen hours.

The payroll system, he knew without checking, would record nine.

He took two containers from the cantina. One held stew and bread. The other contained some kind of roasted meat, grain and vegetables that had survived the end of the serving period mostly intact.

The woman clearing the trays saw him filling both and said nothing. Eli had become part of the furniture.

Stent was in the room when he returned. That alone stopped Eli in the doorway.

For the last several days they had crossed paths mostly through messages, missing food and occasionally a warm indentation in the mattress where one of them had slept before the other arrived.

Tonight Stent was sitting on the edge of the bed. His jacket lay beside him.

There was a darkening mark high along one cheekbone and another near his jaw. One side of his lower lip had split and dried again. His right hand rested loosely on his thigh. The knuckles were red.

Eli closed the door behind him. “What happened?”

Stent looked up. “I obtained some information.”

Eli set the food down on the shelf. “That was not what I asked.”

“The two events were related.”

Of course they were. Eli stepped closer and looked at him properly. Nothing seemed broken. No blood soaking through clothing. No careful guarding of ribs or shoulder. Stent was moving normally, or near enough.

Still.

“You were in a fight.”

“Yes.”

“With how many people?”

Stent considered the question.

Eli immediately disliked that. “How many?”

“Three.” Eli stared at him. “It was brief.”

“That does not improve it.”

“They were not particularly skilled.”

“That improves it even less, somehow.”

Stent touched the split in his lip with the tip of his tongue and apparently decided it did not warrant further attention.

Eli pulled one of the food containers toward him. “Eat.”

“I already—”

“I brought it. You’re sitting down. Eat.”

Stent looked at him for a moment, then took the container. Eli sat beside him. The bed complained beneath the additional weight.

For several minutes, Stent ate while Eli waited.

He had learned something in the last five days. Pushing Stent while he was hungry, tired or actively deciding how much to reveal produced worse answers, not faster ones.

Eventually Stent set the fork down. “There is a group operating through several of the outer commercial fields.”

Eli straightened slightly. “Stealing ships?”

“Possibly.”

That word had become dangerous.

“What do you know?”

“Not enough yet.” Stent leaned back against the wall. “They are not selecting vessels at random. Smaller commercial ships. Older hulls. Independent operators. Ships that can disappear without a company immediately deploying investigators.”

“That fits us.”

“Yes.”

“Local?”

“Partly.”

Eli frowned.

Stent continued. “There are people here who identify suitable vessels. The ships do not necessarily remain here afterward.”

“Where do they go?”

“I do not know yet.”

“Sold whole?”

“Sometimes. Other times stripped.”

That tightened something in Eli’s stomach. The class-two hyperdrive. The nav system. The replacement components. Everything they had spent months keeping alive.

And, somewhere aboard, a sealed Rebel package intended for Stygeon.

He pushed that thought aside. “Do you have names?”

“A few.”

“Reliable?”

“No.”

“Locations?”

“Some.”

Eli looked at the bruising again. “And asking about those names resulted in this?”

“Not exactly.”

That meant yes, with complications. Eli let it go. For now. “Do you think they took the Faded Glory?”

Stent was quiet long enough that Eli knew the answer before he gave it. “I think they may know who did.”

Not certainty.

But after five days of nothing, it was the first real shape the problem had acquired.

Eli sat back. “That’s something.”

“Yes.”

“Security still has nothing useful.”

“I expected that.”

“They finally reviewed more of the traffic archive. No identification after the transponder disappeared.”

“That is also expected.”

Eli looked at him. “You’re very cheerful tonight.”

“I am not.”

“I know.”

Stent resumed eating.

Eli watched him for another moment. “Are you going back out?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Not tonight.”

“No.”

Good.

Eli did not try to hide his relief. Stent noticed anyway. He always did.