“I’ve already-” she began.
“Terce, she’s legally mine.”
“You ain’t cleared for yellows,” the man said, hunching belligerently over the girl. He was a tall enough man, but the furs made him even more bulky.
“Am, too.” She waved her ID at him; snarling, he batted at her hand, dismissing her qualification. “I got a passenger all legal, Terce,” she went on. “You weren’t even here.”
Yana deftly inserted herself between them and made eye contact with the intruder. “I’ve already accepted Rourke’s assistance, but I thank you for your willingness to transport me.”
“I gotta, dama …”
At first Yana thought he was swearing at her and then realized that he was bowing with great subservience. There was an edge of anxiety in his voice and manner.
“You’re safer with me,” the girl said, glaring such a challenge first at Yana and then at Terce that Yana sensed that more was at stake than just a fare.
“Look, girl, another yellow ticket.” Terce gestured toward a man whose yellow ticket was plainly visible in his hand, “you take ‘im.” Then he took a firm hold on Yana’s upper arm and began to swing her toward his vehicle.
Deftly, almost automatically, Yana disengaged her arm and then strode across to the battered little MTS-registered snocle.
“Dama, dama,” Terce cried, real concern in his voice.
Yana ignored him, lengthening her stride when she heard the triumphant exclamation from Buneka, followed by the sound of boots slithering across the snow mush behind her. Yana hit the door release on the passenger’s side, then paused a moment to catch her breath before she slung her sacks onto the rear storage shelf. Still chuckling over her success, the girl slid into the driver’s scat.
“You’d better button up. This thing takes longer to warm up than Terce’s fancy sleigh.”
“And I’m safer with you?” Yana asked at her driest, as she rearranged her hood and scarf and belted into the seat before slipping her hands back into the fur mittens.
The girl’s eyes crinkled. “Well, Terce is known to do ‘errands’ for folk. My hunch is he was there on purpose to collect you. If you’d wanted to go with him, you could have, of course, but you didn’t. So you didn’t know he was there to meet you. So … you’re safer with me-especially the way he was acting. He’s not very bright.” Her remark was couched in a kindly tone but held a hint of caution nonetheless. She glanced over at Yana, her eyes bright, alert.
Well, Yana mused. An hour on the planet and intrigue starts already. Never a dull moment, no matter what the spaceflot about Petaybee was. PTB! Powers that be. She chuckled at the thought but let that also be an answer for her driver.
The chuckle turned into one of her coughing fits, and between spasms she fumbled in her sack for her bottle of syrup. She was suddenly weak with the effort it took to draw enough breath between explosions that threatened to blow her ribs apart. The fur mittens made her hands clumsy, and she almost dropped the bottle before she could peel a mitten from her shaking hand and get the plastic cap off. As soon as the syrup began to coat her pharynx, the spasm eased. She cradled the bottle in her hands, against her chest. The preparation had a lot of alcohol in it, but she still wouldn’t risk it freezing.
The girl slowed the vehicle and looked back at her with wide eyes. Poor kid looked as if she were wishing that she had let Terce take her fare.
“Are you-all right, Major?”
Yana gulped another swallow of the syrup, this time feeling the warmth spreading into the poisoned cavities of her damaged lungs. Every time she coughed, ;-he images flashed through her brain of the graphic films the doctors had shown her when they had explained why she was no longer fit for active duty. As if the fact that she couldn’t laugh or hoist a duffel bag without a paroxysm of coughing wasn’t evidence enough of her disability. Still, she was alive, which was more than the others were. She recapped the bottle, tucked it into her parka pocket, and pulled the mitten back over her hand. It was already going numb with cold. She noted with satisfaction, however, that there was no blood on either mitten.