“One bad move after another.” Kayfive shook its head. “Like the bite of the Qorlon minni, taking chunks so small you don’t notice until your arm falls off.”

  Dinah had no idea what a Qorlon was, or what their minnis did. She decided, not for the first time, it was better not to ask.

  “I hope they take my suggestion.”

  Nobody asked what her suggestion had been, though only half of them had been there when she made it. She assumed that meant they’d been talking about it, or about her, and she swallowed a sigh. Yeah. I’m sick of this, and no amount of whiskey is gonna make it better. Her mind crowded with the pressing memories of how exhausted Kikrok’s colonists had been, and the last remaining pieces of her urge to step carefully around her still-newish crew flaked away.

  “The one for them to register the catastrophic failure code to Interstel.” She added the words deliberately, as though maybe they didn’t know.

  “What will that do?” Viphaaxi asked, unfolding her upper arms. Zixoti leaned harder against her, but she brushed her mate away.

  “Move them to the front of the line for resources and support ”

  “Move them, or move the colony?”

  “What do you…?” Dinah clenched her jaw, then forced herself to relax. “It’s the same thing.”

  “Is it?” Sawyer’s tone was less abrupt than Viphaaxi’s, and she stretched her arms across the table, palms up in a way Dinah took as an intent to be calming. “Which is more important to Interstel – the profits from the colony’s mining, or the people who live there?”

  “Without the people who live there, they don’t get the minerals…” Dinah shook her head and ignored her noodles in favor of studying Sawyer’s open expression.

  “If you received that code at Interstel, what would you do?” Viphaaxi’s antennae straightened, and she moved away from Zixoti when he stirred in protest.

  “Viv…” Ehnuli said softly, and the Velox ignored her as well.

  “Forward it back to headqu –”

  “And what would they do?”

  “Dispatch a ship, with resources, to help the colony.”

  “What department is that?”

  Dinah’s flash of impatience surged out of her like air through a punctured hull, and her shoulders slumped before she could pull them upright. Viphaaxi pressed on before she could summon an answer.

  “Do you know what class of ship they’d send? What are the regulations for that support? Is there a penalty charged to the colony?”

  She didn’t know. She didn’t know and had no way of hiding that in her expression, and each of her crew stared at her, knowing how much she didn’t know. Sys’Thysin cocked his head at her, his mouth curved in amusement. Zixoti shifted too much to be comfortable, while Viphaaxi held perfectly still and focused both compound eyes on her. Ehnuli fluttered, her translator clicking through half-started words in her aborted attempts to soothe. Kayfive blinked too much for someone who didn’t need the eye lubrication, and Sawyer nodded and pulled her hands back.

  None of them expressed surprise.

  Dinah had been so careful, so considerate, and she realized it hadn’t mattered. They put up with her because they had to, because otherwise Interstel would repossess The Swingin’ Miss and they’d all be in breach of contract. Because her father died. They’d chosen to work for him, not her. She was the Interstel interloper who didn’t even know how her own company had worked, and…The box she shoved her emotions into overflowed, and she stamped harder on it, then reached for her noodles.

  “Hopefully it will be better at Farsel.” It wasn’t the right thing to say. If there were a right thing to say, it was so far from her ability to grasp it might as well be at Interstel headquarters.

  “Hopefully,” Sawyer answered, and Dinah couldn’t tell if her smile was genuine, or vaguely pitying. She wished it didn’t matter.

  “Swingin’ Miss, you have no idea how glad we are to see you.” Unlike Kikrok, Farsel’s docking master didn’t bother to hide her relief. “We have a delegation ready and waiting to help you unload at bay three.”

  “Understood, Farsel Control. We’ll see you in…” Dinah glanced at Viphaaxi, who held up her two left upper appendages. “Two hours. Swingin’ Miss out.” She stood and stretched, then leaned forward to close her control panel. “I’m going onto the station, Nav. You will have the ship once we’re docked.”

  “Understood, Captain.”

  The tall Velox had said few other words to Dinah since the last conversation in the galley, and the simple words, neutrally delivered, set the ridges of her ears burning.

  “Viphaaxi.”

  “Captain?”

  “Interstel is a big company.”

  “Understood, Captain.”

  Dinah’s teeth clenched so hard she heard them creak. Thankful no one else was on the bridge, she turned fully toward Viphaaxi’s station and breathed in deeply through her nose to ensure her voice held steady.

  “I’m aware the ways you all might have experienced it are very different than how I did. But my father was never anything but proud of me, and encouraged me to sign up from the time I was in school.”

  “Under –”

  “For the sake of every tiny burning thing, Viphaaxi!” She tried to breathe so as not to snap again, and then gave it up as a lost cause. Six months she’d bit her tongue, and her navigation officer had only grown more of…whatever this was. She hadn’t heard Zixoti say more than three words ever. She was tired of bending for the expectations of her crew, when she couldn’t even figure out what those were.

  “If you think Interstel is five gallons of feces in a two gallon bag, by all means say something. If you think the same of me, then, you know what? Same. I’m sure we can find a way to transfer your and your mate’s contract somewhere else. I’d hate to lose both of your expertise, but this?” She waved her hands, aware for the first time that Viphaaxi had turned her full attention toward Dinah. “Whatever ‘this’ is? I’m sick of it. I’m not Interstel, not anymore, and we all might as well make the most of it.”

  She turned on her heel and strode for the door before she had to hear another ‘Understood, Captain.’

  Good job, she told herself as she slid down the ladder to the main hall. Way to lose Nav and Engineering in one idiot go.

  Might as well gather up her gear and see if she could knock out trade and armed backup, if not science and medical too. Maybe it would be her and her ghost ship, falling through space and missing her father together.

  Damn it.

  Farsel’s station was worse than Kikrok’s. Panels were missing in uneven patterns through the hall outside their airlock, the four humans lined up to meet them grinned too wide in too-hollow cheeks, and none of their loaders worked.

  Dinah made all the right noises and comm’d back to the ship for Zixoti to leave his maintenance and put his strength to work alongside their ship’s sleds for unloading.

  The mess was not made better with the colonists continual effusive spills of gratitude, nor the way their eyes lingered on the crates marked with edible and perishable stickers.

  “Swingin’ Miss is a Euripides class?” One of the young men, all bones and gawky joints, bobbed eagerly alongside her as they walked through a dim corridor toward Farsel’s main bay.

  “All her life,” Dinah answered, summoning a smile that must have come across genuine enough to encourage him.

  “Those are pretty maneuverable, great choice for trade. Not like the big haulers, whew they can’t turn once they get up to speed, right? Do you have the four bays or six?” He bounced as he walked beside her, pushing three crates on a flat surface with honest-to-real wheels. It seemed too much energy for him to expend, given he looked spindly enough to snap, but talking about her ship had brought too much life to his face for her to discourage it.

  “Six. She had five for a while after an accident with a spray of micrometeors, and my father said she’d pull to the left for months after they fixed her up.” Dinah winked at the kid to show it was a joke, and his sudden laugh boomed through the too-quiet halls of the station.

  Sawyer turned at the sound, and Dinah lifted her eyebrows in response. Was she going to get judged for cheering up a sad colonist? Could she bring herself to care if she were?

  After a moment, Sawyer grinned, and dropped back next to them. “You think that’s something, you should hear what happened when we got an upgraded energy cloud. Swingin’ Miss kept reading her own blockers as a threat and trying to target it. Alarms were going off every ten minutes.” She rolled her eyes and shrugged, the gestures so exaggerated the kid laughed again. “Took us a week to get her used to it. Slept so well when it was over.”

  “Do all ships have personalities? Like, like androids? We have a couple, but they’re pretty boring compared to, you know, stories I’ve heard?” He swallowed multiple times, eyes darting between Dinah and Sawyer, and Dinah decided to tell the tallest tales she could to brighten his day.

  Despite the unexpected moments of camaraderie, unloading took too long. They all worked hard, both in encouraging the colonists and in getting everything transferred and accounted for, but by the time she returned to the galley, only Sys’Thysin seemed to have much of an appetite.

  “It shouldn’t be this bad.” Dinah hadn’t made a conscious decision to speak when the words left her face.

  Ehnuli made a shuffling noise of agreement, but Sys’Thysin shrugged. Dinah raised her eyebrows at him, and after a moment he dropped his half-eaten leg and sat forward.

  “They’re all like thiss. Some a little worse, some a little better, but every sstop you’ve made with us has been like this.” He clipped each word short. “Arrrth is pushing hard to grow, and these are the consequences.”

  “Arth, or Interstel?” Viphaaxi asked softly, crossing and uncrossing her upper appendages.

  “Who caress?” Sys’Thysin shrugged. “Where there iss need, there isss profit. Our accountsss are in the green, that iss all the Captain need be concerned with.”

  “The Captain is concerned about a helluva lot, Sys.” Dinah had never been invited to use his nickname, and when he stiffened in silent protest, she stared him down. Profit was one thing – it kept them in much better standing on their contract – but at the expense of what she’d seen at Farsel and Kikrok? There had to be a better way.

  “Interstel contracts out supply runs. Maybe they don’t know the worst of it. I’ll ask some of my friends, see what we can do.” She chewed on the side of her thumb and mentally composed the message she’d send to Porter.

  Viphaaxi clicked, and Ehnuli swayed, and Sawyer snorted, and Dinah wondered if she’d ever figure out this crew at all.

  “Kenneson!” Porter’s message featured such an extreme close-up of his face that she couldn’t tell if he was still on his ship or back at Starport. “Always good to hear your voice, but this better not count as next time – drinks are still very much on you. I don’t hear much about the colonies, you know how it is. My lane is all about identifying the good rocks so they can be mining outposts or colonies. I don’t know a lot about how they stay alive from there.”

  An upside-down v appeared in the skin between his eyebrows, and cleared as quickly.

  “Asked some friends, but no one’s reported in any issues. Maybe outward’s just on a rough go. Everyone gets a turn at that, right? Interstel knows their obligations, it can’t get too bad.” His grin broadened, and he ducked his head in a way she was sure was meant to be charming. If she didn’t have Kikrok’s hollow-eyed desperation and Farsel’s eager gratitude so clear in her thoughts, it might have worked.

  Instead she wanted to punch him.

  “I mean, the company wouldn’t want the colonies to fail, right? Who’d get us our minerals?” He laughed at his own joke, and she swore and clicked away from the message before he could say more words that would make her like him less.

  There hadn’t been a speck of concern in his expression that she could find, and if Porter couldn’t hear the urgency in her message, she couldn’t think of anyone else who would.

  Sys’Thysin hadn’t been wrong. Arth did want growth, both to hold their own in the interstellar tensions with larger, older empires, and to ensure the survival of their species. Each foothold they secured was fragile, but key.

  If Interstel weren’t prepared to take care of those people who held each foothold…

  She’d do it herself. Interstel limited how much contracted trade ships could bring to each colony, but Swingin’ Miss had a long spine and six attached bays, with plenty of spaces in between. She could find overlooked spots to tuck goods into, carry more to colonies that had less, put some of their profit to work.

  Interstel wouldn’t like it, but that was space. All kinds of things not to like. If she found enough boltholes, Interstel would never have to be troubled by the knowledge of what she was doing.

  She nodded to herself and marched down to the bays, determined to dig and identify spots to weld, and remake her bays, if she had to.

  A few hours later she found far more than she’d been looking for.

  Time for a crew meeting.

  “It’s like this,” Dinah said to her assembled crew, tapping her thumb against her palm to keep from chewing on it. “The colonies out here aren’t getting what they need. Interstel isn’t holding up their end of the bargain. I don’t know why, but I do know they don’t like things like that getting pointed out.”

  “Like what?” Sawyer swung around in her seat, dragging her toes over the floor to keep to a half circle.

  “Things where they’re in the wrong.”

  “Touchy,” Kayfive said in a hushed tone, as though it were whispering, but projected at a louder volume. “Like the Uhlek at any point in time.” Dinah almost smiled – that comparison, at least, made sense.

  “But we have a ship, and a way to get supplies to the colonies that need them.”

  “They’re not going to let us double or quadruple up on supplies at Starport,” Viphaaxi interjected, her head cocked to focus her eyes on the captain and her antennae at full alert.

  “We have a clever trademaster. I know we can get what we need.”

  “And then…?” Sawyer glanced at Sys’Thysin, and when he didn’t speak, she leaned forward. “If Interstel is going to be touchy…?”

  “Clever bookkeeping.”

  “And if someone looks?”

  “I looked.” She took a deep breath, mentally crossed her fingers, and plunged in. “I dug through the bays seeing where we could maybe build a false wall, connect to a conduit, get some extra capacity.” She let the words hang there and observed how very still each member of her crew had become. All of them. Her lips quirked at the lack of surprise, which confirmed her guess. “You all know what I found.”

  She’d meant to make it a question, as over-dramatic as it felt now. Instead she flattened it into a statement, and waited.

  Ehnuli broke first, swaying. Sawyer barked a laugh, but the translator didn’t kick in to translate the Elowan’s movements. Dinah hoped like hell she was right, that her father had truly led this crew, not been betrayed by them.

  “You found false walls,” Viphaaxi said, her tone uninflected as ever, though she inclined her upper thorax toward her. “Cubbies in the conduits. Linings too thick for efficiency.”

  “You’ve done this before. You’ve been doing it all along?” Her voice lifted despite her efforts, as her eyes shifted from one of her crew to the next. “Swingin’ Miss is a smuggler’s ship.”

  “Your father saw the need,” Sys’Thysin said, with something like a sigh. “I saw the profit.”

  “Need and profit is a helluva opportunity.” Sawyer smiled, but her eyes stayed cold on Dinah. “We did what we had to.”

  “Are doing.”

  Sawyer inclined her head.

  “And my father…?”

  “We think…” Ehnuli swayed, turning toward Viphaaxi. When the Velox didn’t move, Ehnuli twisted her longer arm and continued, the translator nearly as rhythmic as her movements. “We think someone got suspicious. Assumed our Captain was the issue.”

  “Took him out.” Zixoti said, each word ringing through the galley, through Dinah’s entire body.

  That possibility – the sudden and complete likelihood of it, where a moment before she hadn’t even imagined it – twisted her spine and loosened her knees.

  “You think he was murdered?”

  “You know very well how hard flight is on our – most of our – bodies,” Sawyer said, her voice brisk. Her shoulders dropped though, some tension bleeding out of her as Dinah fought for balance. “Kayfive runs diagnostics on us all the time. Nothing was wrong with your father’s heart.”

  “Until it stopped.” Zixoti spoke again, and the impossibility of all of it swirled through Dinah until she truly believed, for one wild moment, that their artificial gravity had failed.

  “It’s not – it’s possible…” She couldn’t find the words she needed. That was…it was stupid. Impossible. She didn’t have enough air to form her arguments, and her thoughts slipped around her as she struggled.

  “It could have been a sudden tragedy, yes. But he never wanted this life for you, Dinah.” Sawyer’s voice softened, ever so slightly, on her name. Had Sawyer ever used her name before? “Ehnuli was supposed to take over the ship. He talked about it with us. It was clear in Captain Kenneson’s files.”

  Sys’Thysin muttered something, but without heat to it. He shook himself and said at a normal volume, “Suddenly Interstel said it had to be next of kin or the contract was void. I looked at all the contracts before I came on board.”

  “That wasn’t in the contract?” She’d read the contract too. Sent it to an old roommate, now a lawyer, in the hopes she could find a way to wriggle out of it. There hadn’t been any room to do so – she was her father’s next of kin, and designated heir. It was her or nothing.