"That's harsh, Captain." His nose ridges opened and closed a couple of times. "You'd just let me go?"

  "Better than you being horny and frustrated on my boat. Go or get over her."

  He shifted his slate from foot to hand and back to foot again. "Not too many female Krai out here, Captain."

  "That's why the universe gave us the di'Taykan."

  "It'd make me feel better if I got to dispose of the next CSO we pick up."

  "No." Cho didn't care how fukking frustrated his helmsman got, the last thing he wanted, given what had sent Huirre out into the deep, was to indulge the Krai's taste for Human flesh. Sure, running Page through Huirre's gut would have removed any evidence of the way he'd died, but it wasn't like the Wardens would stumble over the CSO's body anytime soon. OutSector Wardens were about as much of a threat as a pouched H'san.

  "So, Captain…" Huirre's nose ridges began opening and closing slowly. Cho figured he was breathing himself into a better mood. "… seems like this equation's going to take us pretty damned close to the edge."

  "We need a younger salvage operator. The young take chances. The edge is all about taking chances. We've got a line on a single ship, and I don't want a repeat of Page."

  "Ah." Huirre nodded. "Suppose it doesn't hurt that the Wardens never get out that far."

  "No," Cho agreed in a tone that said the conversation was over, "it doesn't."

  The Dargonar had come out of Susumi space three seconds before the Heart of Stone, having made no changes in the equations Huirre had sent. Cho chose to take that as a good sign.

  "Move in at one eighty to our zero." Cho frowned down at the ship locked into his long-range scanners. "Don't worry about being seen, just tag the pen. When they dump, they'll hit their aft thrusters." Fukking predictable. The first thing a CSO did after dumping their pen was hit the aft thrusters every damned time. Surged straight ahead until they could fold into Susumi space. It was like every one of them forgot normal space had three dimensions. "We'll be waiting to grapple the ship in. Make sure the operator is in the ship before you tag."

  "Gre ta ejough geyko. You just do your job and leave us to do ours. We keep what's in the pen. Firrg out."

  Cho glared at the back of Huirre's head. "Translation."

  "Roughly, sit on it and rotate." Huirre kept his gaze locked on his board. "She's moving out."

  "Take us into position."

  "We can't just let her have the pen, Captain!" Dysun protested.

  "We can if I say we can," Cho told her shortly. Let Firrg have the pen. He had a Marine armory with all the promise of a great and glorious future it contained, and the Krai captain didn't have a hope in hell of scoring anything that even came close to matching it.

  As Huirre maneuvered the Heart of Stone into position, her signature masked by the static emitted by a pair of lopsided rings circling an equally lopsided planetoid, he split his attention between the salvage ship and the empty space beyond it, waiting for Firrg to appear.

  "Captain, the salvage ship's engines have come on-line." Dysun transferred the information to Cho's screen. "I think they're getting ready to move out."

  "No one asked for your opinion," Huirre growled, hands and feet ready over his board.

  The di'Taykan's hair flipped up on the side closest to the Krai. "Who tied your kayt in a knot?"

  "Gren sa talamec!"

  "If someone stuffed it up yours, you'd be in a better mood," she snorted.

  "Shut up. Both of you." Fingers digging into the edge of his screen, Cho willed Firrg to make her move.

  "Net's are away, Captain!"

  "I don't see them."

  "We're not picking them up on visuals, but there's a ripple in the data." Hair flicking quickly back and forth, Dysun bent over her board. I'm boosting magnification. Give them a minute or two to show… There!"

  "I see them."

  She drummed her fingers on the inert edging. "If that ship starts to move before the nets…"

  "We know," Huirre interrupted. "For horon's sake, we all know."

  Twenty kilometers.

  Fifteen kilometers.

  Five.

  Contact.

  "Anchor lines have caught. Dargonar has powered the buoys. They've dumped their pen, Captain! They're moving!"

  "Get them, Huirre."

  "Aye, aye, Captain."

  Huirre moved the Heart of Stone out of concealment directly toward the fleeing ship.

  Suddenly faced with another ship, the salvage operator did the unexpected and went straight up the Y-axis.

  "Son of a fukking bitch!" Cho shifted forward on his seat as though the movement would bring them into alignment. Huirre had them perfectly positioned had the other ship been where it was supposed to be. It just figured that today, when it meant so much, he'd run into the one original thinker in the entire fukking salvage fleet. "Almon!"

  "Captain?"

  "Get the grapples into that ship!"

  "It's not…"

  "I know it's not! Huirre, bring the aft end around!" In spite of the inertial dampeners, his stomach lurched as Huirre flipped the Heart vertically. "Almon, do it!"

  "But.."

  "Now!" He was not letting this salvage operator get away. Not when he was so close to getting that armory open.

  "Aye, aye, Captain. Grapples away!"

  Cho watched the signals from the grapple ends close in on the smaller ship, willing them to make contact and dig in. He'd haul that CSO's ass inboard so fast it would… Contact! "Huirre!"

  "Aye, Captain." Eyes locked on his own screens, Huirre worked the lateral thrusters with both hands. "Adjusting angles."

  "Shit!"

  "Talk to me, Almon."

  "Looks like the Susumi drive's punctured!"

  The silence in the control room was so complete Cho could have sworn he heard half the light receptors in Dysun's eyes snap closed. "Looks like?" he growled. "Be sure!"

  "I tried to warn.."

  "Cover your own ass, why don't you," Huirre muttered.

  "Captain! Energy leakage." Dysun's voice had risen half an octave. "There's a puncture for sure."

  A punctured Susumi drive meant they were, at best, moments away from being caught in a blast wave of Susumi energy. At worst, they'd go up with the other ship.

  "Release grapples!"

  "Released! But it'll take twenty-seven seconds to bring them in!"

  "Huirre! Get us out of here!"

  "Captain! The grapples!"

  "Fuk the grapples! Let them swing!" Being smacked about by their own lines was the least of their worries. Susumi explosions twisted space. "Huirre, get us back behind that rock!" The planetoid that had hidden them earlier offered their best chance of survival; its bulk would deflect most of the Susumi wave.

  Huirre burned everything they had. They were still too close.

  "What the fuk is going on up there?" Krisk had bypassed the comm protocols again.

  Before Cho could answer, Huirre snarled a fast sentence in Krai at the engineer, who growled back, "Not on my watch."

  The Heart of Stone surged forward. Swearing, Huirre worked his board with all four extremities, fighting to maintain course while riding the unexpected burst of power. They'd just passed the planetoid's rings and were rounding the horizon when the salvage ship blew. In the 2.73 seconds it took for the blast wave to hit, Huirre managed to get most of the Heart to safety. Cho made a mental note to give him a really big gun when they got the armory open.

  If they survived.

  The blast hit the aft end just behind the cargo hold, flinging the Heart end over end. Huirre danced both hands and feet across his board, firing microsecond bursts on one thruster after another to keep them clear of the rings. Rock slammed into the hull. The lights flared and went out. Dysun swore and threw herself backward as her board sparked, left hand cradling her right.

  Then it was over, the control room lit only by the telltales on the boards.

  "Nat!"

  "Aye, Cap. Checking cargo integrity."

  "Fuk cargo integrity." Krisk sounded furious. "We've got two small hull breaches, and we're at half thrusters until someone gets out there and looks at the damage the right fukking grapple did."

  "The hull breaches…"

  "I sent Lime-boy out to do interior patches… Krisk had never bothered to learn the di'Taykan's names. "… but at least one is going to need exterior work. Easy fix. No idea about the rest until I see on real time."

  "Could be worse," Huirre muttered, still working his board.

  "I'm fried." Still holding one hand against her chest, Dysun danced the fingers of the other over a blank screen. "Scanners are out. Internal communications are using the captain's station as their primary. It'll only take a moment to reroute external comms."

  "One-handed?"

  She glanced down at her hand, seemed to see the reddened curl of her fingers for the first time, and whimpered, her hair flattening tight against her skull.

  "Get down to Doc. Have him fix it, then get your ass back here." Pain had shut her eyes down so far there was almost no black among the orange. Given the lack of light, he wondered how she could even see.

  "The comm…"

  "You think I'm fukking useless, is that it?" As her eyes darkened slightly, he dove into the guts of the operating system. Theoretically, the entire ship could be flown from the captain's board, but the defaults had to be overwritten first. Thank the Navy for making sure every idiot who joined could slap together a patch. When he looked up, she was still staring at him. "Go!"

  "Captain?"

  He looked up from his board to find Huirre watching him. It was too dark to see the Krai's expression. Hell, it was almost too dark, given the lack of hair, to be positive he was starring at Huirre's face. "What?"

  "If we want lights back, I'd better help Krisk."

  "How stable is our orbit?"

  "Doesn't need watching if that's what you're asking."

  Given Huirre's careful tone, Cho figured he must smell like he was fukking furious. Good call, given that he was. "Go. Tell Krisk I said you were to concentrate on the lights. If he gives you any shit, I'll deal with him."

  "Aye, Captain."

  They needed the scanners and weapons back on-line. Dysun would need the lights to repair her board. "Oh, and Huiire." He heard the helmsman pause by the hatch. "You saved our asses. Good work."

  "I was mostly concerned with saving my own ass, Captain."

  "I don't give a flying fuk what your motivation was."

  He could hear Huirre grin. "Aye, Captain."

  The ship's original OS had been sliced and diced when safeties had been removed and new programming added, so it took him longer than he liked to get the external comm patched through. The system was barely up and running when it grabbed an incoming repeat from the Dargonar.

  Cho considered ignoring it. Didn't.

  "So you're not dead," Firrg sounded disappointed. "Your salvage operator is."

  Somehow, Cho managed to hold his temper. No point in starting something he couldn't finish with Dysun's board out. "We'll find another. They're like cockroaches."

  "You'll find another, not me. Not my problem if you're incompetent. I did what I said I'd do, and that clears me with Big Bill. You say otherwise, I'll hunt you down and eat your liver."

  It sounded more like a statement of fact than a threat.

  "Good news is the armory took no damage." Nat snorted. "Of course, that's a little obvious since we're not a smoking hole in space. Marines are hard on their toys, so the Corps builds those fukkers to last." She swept her thumb over her slate and scowled down at the data. "Fact is, Cap, the cargo hold came through aces. The galley, not so much. The Susumi energy changed all of the protein strings. Won't kill us right away, but cumulative effects would be unpleasant. Doc says we should space anything with the new markers. Not even let Huirre and Krisk eat it."

  "And that'll leave us with what?" Cho demanded.

  She shook her head. "Not a lot. We can stay out maybe a tenday with supplements, but we're going to be hungry after a couple of days, very hungry by the end of the tenday, and sharing a ship with very hungry Krai, specially given why those two are out here-well, frankly, Cap, that doesn't appeal."

  Krisk had been a Navy engineer. Accelerated promotion to petty officer and moving up fast. Then, during a battle, he'd eaten his lieutenant. Eating her had meant Krisk could stay at his post and make the repairs that saved the ship. It might have been ignored-heat of the battle, circumstances needs must-except that there had been other organics Krisk could have eaten instead. Not to mention that the review board hadn't been entirely convinced it had been the enemy that killed her.

  Cho glared down at his screen. Krisk had advised against bringing the Susumi engines on-line until he checked them out.

  "Shielding could've held. They might be fine. 'Course, we're toasted if they're not. Take me some time to make sure."

  "How much time?"

  "If you trust Lemon-and-Lime-boy to do the external patching, I can run basic tests in three. Results'll tell me how much longer."

  "You've got two." Cho indicated that Almon should suit up and join Nadayki outside.

  "Well, that's fukking great. My jernil always said there'd be no one to eat me after I'm gone."

  Two days minimum before they could get the Susumi drive back on-line. Five and a half days folded into Susumi space to get back to Vrijheid Station. Seven and a half days with food for two. Even if the Humans and di'Taykan went on short rations to keep the Krai fed, that was dangerous bordering on covering each other in steak sauce.

  "Keep rations as short as you can," he told Nat finally. "Use the supplements. How are we for water?"

  "We've got water up the wazoo, Cap."

  "If a wazoo is what I think it is…" Almon grinned, pausing half into his HE suit, "… there's this place where you can…"

  Cho glared Almon to silence and bent over his slate, searching for a closer station where they could resupply without attracting the attention of the sector's Wardens. Torin checked the balance on her slate one more time as they walked away from the quartermaster's office. "You're certain people make a living doing this job?"

  "Some of us do." Craig bumped against her, his shoulder warm and solid. "MidSector stations pay more, but they need less and they charge more for docking and respiration. OutSector stations need the materials, so they'll take everything you have, but they haven't the lolly. It's a balancing act." His gesture took in the minimal distractions offered in the station's commercial pier where there was one bar and an undersupplied store. "And how could you refuse these hardworking people the pleasure of our company?"

  Torin shook her head. "Let me guess. Bored people are more willing to play cards with you even though the last time you were through, you cleaned them out."

  He grinned. "I may have won a couple of hands.

  "Unfortunately, Lurell, at least for you, full house, tens over threes, beats three nebulas." Craig scoped in the pot as Lurell ruffled her feathers and made quiet hooting noises.

  Lurell's pale blue crest hadn't entirely grown in making her just barely adult by Rakva standards. Old enough to be in the bar, therefore, old enough to play. Although Torin knew better than to extrapolate an emotional state from the facial expressions of a nonmammalian species, she felt safe assuming that, like most kids her age, Lurell believed her luck would change if she just kept playing long enough. Technically true, given that continued play would teach her luck had less to do with winning than learning when to fold. From the way her feathers kept ruffling up along the back of her neck, Torin suspected she'd already lost more than she should have-in spite of the credit chits still in front of her.

  Lifting her head, Torin frowned past Lurell's shoulder and across the bar toward the windows-Craig liked the potential for a quick escape an outside seat represented, Torin preferred a wall at her back. "Lurell, you know a big male Rakva with a dark blue crest?"

  Lurell jumped and only just managed to keep from looking over her shoulder. "This one has a brother with a dark blue crest," she admitted, with studied nonchalance. "Why does one ask?"

  Torin shrugged. "He just went by outside on the concourse. He didn't look happy."

  "How could one tell?"

  "Could have been the way his crest was up," Torin told her, blandly. "Or could have been because people were hauling ass out of his way."

  "Ah. And he is…?"

  Taking a long swallow of beer, Torin put the bottle down before answering. "He's gone now."

  "Ah."

  Cards shuffled, Kensu, the scarlet-haired di'Taykan dealing, paused as Lurell pushed her chits around on the table "You in, baby bird?"

  "Yes… No."

  His eyes lightened. "Which is it?"

  Crest flattened, she scooped up her chits and stood. "This one remembers this one has things to do. This one…" She opened and closed her beak a couple of times, then ruffled her feathers-the Rakva equivalent of a blush-and headed for the door. Where she paused and turned. "This one wonders which way…"

  "That way." Torin pointed.

  Lurell nodded. Left the bar. Went the other way.

  "Not that I'm objecting…" Kensu dropped a red nebulae in front of her on his first circuit of the table. "… but why make up stories to scare the baby bird away?"

  "I don't like taking money from children." Torin checked her cards again. They hadn't changed into something she could use.

  "No brother?" Craig asked, brow up. He hadn't been able to see the window. Kensu had.

  "No brother." The quartermaster had been a Rakva with Lurell's coloring. Pictures of his fledglings had been scattered around the office. The blue feathers in the crests were fairly distinctive, so she'd played the odds.

  "How's she going to learn if you mollycoddle her?" Surrivna Pen, one of the two Niln at the table wondered. "Kid needs to learn the world'll shit on her if it can."

  "She doesn't need to learn it from me," Torin said.

  The Niln snorted something that sounded very much like, "Soft."

  Rolling her shoulders, Torin considered responding to the deliberate provocation and decided against it. A fight would end the game, and given what they'd made for the salvage, Craig's skill at the table had taken on a new relevance.