Robert Asprin – Tambu

“I don’t know. I’m too tired to think straight anymore. Maybe it will seem clearer tomorrow.”

“How tired are you?” Ramona drawled, pressing herself against him.

“Well…” Tambu mused with mock solemnity, “I was thinking of going to bed.”

They kissed and moved toward the bed with their arms around each other’s waists.

The communications console chimed softly.

Ramona groaned dramatically, and Tambu swore under his breath.

“I’ll try to keep this short,” he promised.

A glance at the call board identified the call as coming from the Raven. Whitey!

“Yes, Whitey?” he asked flipping on the activator switch.

As Whitey’s face swam into focus, he noted there were circles of fatigue under her eyes.

“Sorry to call you so late,” she apologized, “but I just finished a brainstorming session with my crew and wanted to get a hunk of uninterrupted time with you.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Well, we just finished investigating a complaint by some of the planetside folk that a couple of our boys busted up a bar and put two people in the hospital.”

“Which crewmen?”

“That’s the whole point. When we checked, it turned out that it wasn’t our crew at all. A couple of planetside toughs were throwing their weight around and saying they were Tambu’s men so they could get away with it We’ve had the authorities go through our crew roster, and the witnesses confirmed it wasn’t any of our crew; but in the meantime the pilot of our shuttle got jumped at the spaceport and was beaten pretty badly.”

“That’s unfortunate, but I don’t see what I can do about it.”