feet to the floor and let others sit at her table, giving every indication of ignoring them and their conversation while rapt at fictionalized imperial duplicity.
In point of fact, Kiva didn’t give a fuck about The Emperoxs. She had a supporting role in the actual life of a real emperox, which was more than enough drama for one lifetime, thank you very much. The fictionalized versions were fucking tedious at best. But when you’re listening in on other people’s conversations, it makes sense to look busy. The headphones in Kiva’s ears had been silent, even as the show played on her tablet, and while she kept her eyes mostly on her screen, whenever she took a sip of her tea she would look around, keying voices to faces.
With the exception of Captain Robinette, who took his meals alone, everyone came to the mess sooner or later. The Our Love was either too small for an officers’ mess, or else Robinette didn’t want to bother with the expense. The entire population of the ship had to eat; when they came in, Kiva listened and learned.
And here is what she learned:
That crewman Harari was slowly dying of a lung disorder and that standard treatments were doing nothing for him; he’d signed on to the Our Love to fund growing a new set of lungs, but this trip was a loss because there was no cargo to profit-share from, just that stupid passenger. His wages wouldn’t make a dent in the cost, and he was already having trouble breathing.
That engineer’s mate Bayleyf had overheard Chief Engineer Gibhaan arguing with Captain Robinette about the precarious state of the generator that contained the bubble of spacetime the Our Love surrounded itself with in its trip through the Flow; one instantaneous flicker of that field and all of them would simply stop existing before they even knew they were dead. Gibhaan had warned the captain that it would need to be upgraded along with several other critical engineering functions. Robinette had told Gibhaan to stop being so dramatic.
That purser Engels had jacked up commissary prices and was skimming the difference, again.
That Doc Bradshaw was angry that her stateroom had been hijacked, again, by a goddamned passenger.
(Actually Kiva had already known that. Bradshaw had told her as much the first time they met, as she was going over Kiva’s injuries and then telling her she’d live, and not offering anything other than a basic analgesic. Kiva could sympathize, but she also wasn’t going to sleep on the fucking floor in the cargo hold, so Doc Bradshaw would just have to suck it up.)
That First Officer Nomiek had reason to believe Robinette was lying to the crew about the profitability of this particular voyage, which was not great because Nomiek had reasons to believe that Robinette had been lying to the crew about the profitability of the last several voyages as well, and that Robinette was in general being pretty shifty—more than the usual amount of shifty that being a freelance trader (read: smuggler) implied.
That Jeanie and Roulf, the ship’s sex workers, noticed the crew seemed unhappier than usual this trip, which was annoying because that meant the two of them spent relatively more time being ersatz therapists and less time doing what they were paid to do, which was to get the crew off in a competent and efficient manner because they were paid per appointment, not by salary. If Robinette was going to annoy his crew this much, he should pay for a goddamned therapist.
And so on. In five days Kiva knew everything she needed to know about everyone and everything on the Our Love, and she did it without having to ingratiate herself to anyone, or trying to sneak past their suspicions, or even trying to bang information out of anyone (which she had been known to do in the past but was looking to avoid to do now because she still considered herself to be trying out that monogamy thing, even if she was presumed dead). All it took were headphones and a willingness to look like she gave a shit about scripted entertainment. This was fine by Kiva because by her estimation the Our Love was crewed entirely by fucking asspaddles, the sort of people who became smugglers because no one in the legit world would ever tolerate their shit.
There was only so far a tablet and a pair of headphones could take Kiva, however. So for the next part, she switched to