“Dear friend. Good friend. You don’t want to rash my decision, do you? You want to give me time. We have to maintain good relations.”
Now and again there were mahen words she hadn’t heard. There followed some. Then: “Of course. Number one fine. Talk to you later, pretty captain.”
Tarras was looking up cargo for Kshshti. And if they didn’t want to be charged with abducting the Precious-ness, if they didn’t want to pay back a million credit deal … Kshshti looked to be where they were going.
And out of Kshshti …
Out of Kshshti, Maing Tol, or back to Kita … or worse choices. Kshshti lay in the Disputed Territories. It was still a mahen station.
But it was too close to the kif … far too close for comfort.
And gtst excellency had taken a kifish ship at Kita Point?
Or the kif had taken gtst excellency. Certainly the young stsho Tiar had rounded up on station might have told them what the facts were, if the young stsho had not been driven straight out of gtst mind, either by the harrowing run to the ship, gtst conditions on the station, or the sight of Tlisi-tlas-tin. The fact was, they didn’t know and might never know what had been the triggering event, or whether it bore on what had already happened.
So they had to go on. But she would feel ever so much better if she knew how far they were going to have to chase this Atli-lyen-tlas, or into what.
Hallan really, truly did not want to make another mistake. He knew how to clean the filters and maintain equipment, but he had read the manual and the instructions just the same, to be absolutely, unmistakably certain what he was doing. He didn’t think speed was going to impress anyone … since he was sure they had given him the job to keep him out of the crew’s way; and because it would save the crew a little time. He wished he could find a disaster in the making, that he could fix, and by that, impress the captain and make up for what he had done at Urtur.
He had nightmares about that. He had nightmares about the tc’a showing up and demanding he come methane-side and parent its offspring. And of strangling in the atmosphere. But there were probably laws to protect him from that.
There were none to protect the ship from the fines it had suffered because of him, because of having to close the section doors, and scaring all those people…
He didn’t think he could ever live that down. Sometimes he thought he would be better off to go home and live in the outback and do things the way they had always been done and not be a problem to anyone. He was not really a fighter, he never had been, he was just clumsy, which he daily proved, and his elbows continually found something to bash, or his head to knock into, but there was just no use for being his size on board a ship.
He heard someone come up near him. He did everything as precisely and efficiently as he could. Whoever it was stood there watching. And he finished the job before he looked to see. “ker Fala?” “I was just watching.”
That made him nervous. He put the tools away and got up, intending to take them to the storage. He supposed he should go to the crew lounge then, because he hadn’t any other instructions.
She was still staring at him when he walked away. It made him feel—highly uncomfortable.
The crew aboard the Sun had behaved like that too. And he didn’t feel the same as he did with Sahern clan, he felt confused, but it wasn’t a confusion he wanted to think about. It scared him. He was afraid she was going to be waiting in the lounge when he got back, but she wasn’t, she was in the galley making lunch. And maybe he should go help her, and not sit in the lounge as if there were nothing on the ship his intelligence could discover to do, but he didn’t want to be alone with her, so he started aft. But Fala said, to his back, “Want to help?”