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"Granted, but we're not going in blind."
Werst's nose ridges were nearly shut. "What's the payment?"
"For now? We get to breathe and eat."
"Activities I'm fond of," he admitted. "However…"
"Still here?" Big Bill asked, stepping out of his office.
Torin shifted slightly, just enough to put herself directly in Big Bill's line of sight. "They were just leaving."
"Gu
"Don't worry. Standing next to Big Bill is the safest place on the station."
"It's true." He brushed a bit of nonexistent dust off his shoulder. "Everyone loves me."
Ressk gave him a look that suggested he was wondering how the large man would taste with a nice red sauce. Given Big Bill's amused expression, Torin suspected he'd been looked at that way before.
"You're wasting… Big Bill's time," Torin pointed out. The pause had been small enough it could be explained by any number of reasons. If Big Bill asked, she'd think of one. He didn't ask. They were wasting her time. Craig's time. Big Bill could shove his time up his ass for all she cared. "Go."
They still recognized an order when they heard one.
When they heard the hatch close at the end of the corridor, the Grr brothers snapped off the screens and stood.
Big Bill shook his head. "If anything comes up, the gu
Torin shrugged. "Your first one's free."
"I do like you."
The Grr on the left made a noise Torin nearly echoed.
The Grr on the right rolled his eyes and dropped back onto the sofa, grabbing for the remote.
As she stepped out into the corridor, Torin heard the sound come up on one of the screens and Presit say, "You are having aliens and he are having aliens in your heads-being lovers who are being reunited and who are discovering way to be saving the day. Very romantic."
And Big Bill said, "Whatever happened to that lover you were reunited with?"
"We had aliens in our heads," Torin growled, stepping through the hatch.
When he laughed, Torin resisted the urge to turn and slam him in the throat, crushing his windpipe. But only just.
No one approached them when they crossed the Hub although everyone tracked their progress, voices rising and falling as they passed in a wave of sound that had become familiar to Torin over the last few years.
"Feel free to use your implant," Big Bill told her as they started toward the ore docks, his voice pitched intimately even though there was no one around to overhear. "Many of the free merchants do, although, given that free merchants are strongly individualistic, very few of them have tied into the station. In the interest of security, I've had to have the station's sysop capture and record all signals, even those using ship's computers as SPs."
Torin moved her tongue away from the contact points. None of her crew had implants-the Corps installed them in sergeants and above-but Craig did and Craig was alive on the station. Walking half a stride ahead of Big Bill in an empty corridor, it had seemed like a good time to let Craig know she was there. Just a ping. A moment's contact. And now her codes and Craig's had been captured by the station. They wouldn't know who he was, not yet, but the moment they did, they could co
"Over the years I've noticed a specific muscle twitch, just here…" Big Bill touched his own face, not hers. Good thing. She didn't have a Krai's jaw strength, but she'd have made a damned good attempt to bite his finger off. "… when an implant is in use."
The bastard didn't miss much.
"Of course, when you agree to work for me, I'll need your codes." Nadayki slapped his palm against the locker, his hair standing out around his head in a lime-green aurora. "The last eight digits are a fukking date!"
It hurt to laugh; the vibrations felt like glass ground into the stump of his toe. Craig didn't let that stop him. All his delaying had been completely fukking pointless.
Patterns could be sussed out and, once found, broken, but finding a random date without hooking up a slate, with no way to tell if the first seven numbers were correct until the last number was in-time to pack a lunch. Not all CSOs added that extra layer of protection, but it wasn't uncommon. Birthdays. A
It was the digital version of a steel bar across the door.
"You're a salvage operator, this is a salvage operator's seal. Did you know them?"
Craig actually had his mouth open to answer when he realized Nadayki didn't know that Jan and Sirin had been friends. No one knew. Up until now the crew of the Heart had gone by the old truism that space was big and hadn't asked. "Sure I did, kid. You know di'Akusi Sirin? You're di'Taykan, they're di'…"
"Fuk you. And if you think the captain'll stop at a toe, you're wrong. If he thinks you're screwing him over, he'll have Doc take out organs. And sell them."
Lovely. Craig shifted, trying to ease the burn in his left leg. "Why would you crew under someone who'd allow that?"
"Are you kidding?" Fingers paused on his slate, Nadayki gri
What kind of upbringing did the kid have, Craig wondered, that he was impressed by casual cruelty? Looked like the Taykan were just as capable of fukking up their kids as every other species in known space. "Seems to me," he said, grabbing his thigh and shifting his leg, "that it's more like no one fuks with Doc."
Nadayki shook his head, hair flipping in counterpoint. "Yeah, but Doc signed on with Captain Cho, so…"
Craig missed the rest. He could see Nadayki's mouth moving, so the kid was still talking, but all he could hear was the ping of his implant coming on-line.
Torin.
Had to be Torin.
She was close. She'd found him.
He couldn't answer, not with Nadayki staring right at him, eyes dark, as he laid out all the reasons he admired a thief and murderer. His hands were shaking, so he dug his fingers into the leg of his overalls and hung on. Hung on so tightly to the bunched fabric that his knuckles were white.
He couldn't answer, but he could listen.
His throat was dry. He swallowed. Waited.
Except Torin never spoke.
Just the ping.
One small noise
One small noise that could have been caused by the damage the tasik had done. A random firing of neurons that just happened to sound like an implant coming on-line. A familiar noise created by hope and applied current.
"… and when I get this thing open-because I fukking will…" Nadayki half turned and slapped the side the of the weapons locker. "… the captain will lead us as we take back what's rightfully ours!"
"What's rightfully yours?" Craig repeated when the pause seemed to indicate he was expected to respond. "What's been taken from you?"
"The universe! I am meant for more than this crap," Nadayki continued, arms and hair spread. "I'm smarter than all of those tregradiates who said my attitude wasn't right for their academy, and the captain'll help me prove it. They're going to pay!"
"Yeah, okay." Craig smoothed down the two handfuls of crumpled overall. "How old are you, kid?"
"Stop calling me kid! And I'm old enough to know who has the power and that's more than you can say."
"You have a…"
A hatch clanged in the distance. Too far away to be at the ship, so it had to be the point where the ore docks joined the station.
Nadayki's ear points swiveled toward the sound, his hair following the movement. "Sounds like two pairs of boots."
"Probably people in them, too," Craig grunted, shifting around so his back was against the wall and a corner of the armory stood as bulwark between him and the storage pod's open hatch.