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"Honor and a credit will buy you a bowl of seesu," Nadayki snarled. "We're coming out on top of this, not Big Bill."
"Hadn't you better get back to work, then?"
"Har vena ser shetinan!"
"Not after what happened the last time, kid." Any other di'Taykan standing that close would have grabbed his ass before heading back into the storage pod. It would have been instinctive, expected even given their positions. Watching Thing One toss the wrench aside while Thing Two bitched about wasting time in the ass end of the station, Craig wondered if maybe this time it wasn't the di'Taykan but the situation. These two really had the kid freaked. His mouth went dry as he remembered Huirre crunching down on his toe. On the other hand, maybe the kid had reason to be freaked.
He should give the captain a heads-up.
His hand was actually on his slate before he realized what he was doing.
He wasn't really crew. He didn't owe Captain Cho shit. "I have to admit, I was expecting something more complicated." Big Bill folded his arms and stared at the plans for the smelter up on the big screen. "This is… basic. Except for the range, it looks more like a classroom than a place to train warriors."
Warriors? Torin took a moment to temper her response. And then another moment, just to be on the safe side. "They won't be learning how to charge in, guns blazing. Any idiot can do that and get themselves trapped between decompression hatches breathing vacuum."
"HE suits…"
"Because multiple crews emerging from docking arms all suited up won't look at all suspicious."
"I don't think I like your tone."
Torin tried to look like she cared. "If you want to take over a station, you have to realize that the weapons in the hands are incidental to the weapons between the ears."
He shook his head and blanked the screen. "We don't want them too well armed, Gu
"You still don't understand. When I'm done with them, they'll be weapons-head and hand. You'll be pointing them. What they want won't matter."
He stared at her for a long moment. "You can do that?" he said at last.
"I can." She could. She wasn't going to, but she could.
"And they just let you wander around loose?" He started with a snicker, then his response evolved into a full-out laugh.
Torin fought down another urge to punch him in the throat. And then considered the implication. The Grr brothers were down in the ore docks about as far away from Big Bill as they could get and still be on the station. If she killed him, what would they do? Would they know? Could she show up and send them away, passing on Big Bill's orders because of a sudden glitch in his implant? No, the paranoid bastard would have put contingency plans in place if the Grr brothers couldn't reach him. Given the Grr brothers, that plan would likely be violent, and Craig was in the ore dock.
She couldn't risk making things more complicated than they already were.
"Gu
"I'd like to go down to the ore dock and check the security."
"Why?"
"We have a perfectly good armory. During training, it can be used to secure the weapons."
"I think you forget, Gu
Torin frowned as she worked through the variables. William Po
"They'll own their weapons," she told him. "But you'll own the ammunition."
She thought he was going to deny it for a moment, then he bared his teeth in what wasn't a smile. "You're right. The ammunition won't be remaining in the ore docks, but here, where I can personally keep an eye on it."
"You think Cho will agree to that particular fifteen percent."
"Mackenzie Cho, Gu
"What if he's too ambitious for you?"
"Then he can leave. The way he left the Navy. But if you're that set on not trusting him, go to the ore docks by all means. I'll tell the Grr brothers you're relieving them. They do have other work. Supporting social change is all very well, but accounts won't collect themselves."
For a change, there wasn't so much as an argument in the Hub as Torin crossed through on her way to the ore docks. The dead were gone. The injured from crews without their own medics were no doubt off paying through broken noses to use Big Bill's staff and facilities. A couple of the kiosk owners had their heads together, probably complaining about damages, and two of the smaller cleaners were working their way around the deck doing an inadequate job of dealing with blood splatter, but otherwise things were quiet.
As Torin moved into the first corridor past the decompression doors, she tongued her implant. "Report." *Werst and I are bruised but back on board, Gu
"I'm on my way to the ore docks. I need a value for nearly." *Soon, Gu
"Hour and forty-one minutes and they'll have the fukker open," Torin growled. "Make it sooner."
Craig was sitting on something low by the open storage pod. One of the Grr brothers sat beside him, slate out, the other she couldn't see, so he was either in the head or the pod. It was unlikely he'd go any farther away from what Big Bill had sent them to keep an eye on.
She could feel Craig's gaze on her as she crossed toward him, but she split her attention between noting the exact location of the HE suits, the distance from the storage pod to the exterior hatch, the red lights on the air lock plate leading to the Heart of Stone, and the one Grr brother she could see.
The second emerged from the pod as she reached it. Craig stood, moving carefully-not so much in pain as in anticipation of pain. He'd been sitting on an overturned bucket.
"The great thing about low tech," she said, nodding toward the bucket. "Multiple uses."
"So I've discovered."
His eyes were still bloodshot, but they were bright and focused. With no chance for sleep, he had to have taken a stim. Good. His exhaustion was one less thing for her to deal with. Moving so she could see both Grr brothers put her well within Craig's personal space, but it was a minor thing and a minor comfort and fuk it.
"What?" she demanded as one of them stared up at her, nose ridges flared. "Big Bill told you I was coming down."
"Yeah." He blinked and turned to his brother, nose ridges closing. "You were right."
"Told you." The second Grr put his slate away. When he closed his nose ridges as well, Torin shifted her weight forward onto the balls of her feet. Things were not looking good.
"Apart, it's not so obvious."
"Together, though…"
"Yeah."
"He had hair then."
"True."
"What are the odds that Gu
It was the longest statement Torin had heard from either of them. *That's a very good question, Gu