Navy. When Cho’d taken it over, he’d doubled her firepower and added a cargo bay. Fortunately, vacuum didn’t care about aerodynamics. In his line of work, he couldn’t waste time reworking Susumi equations for every piece of crap they picked up—space was big, sure, but there was always a chance the Navy could accidentally stumble over them while they were sitting around dividing by the cube root of who the fuk cares. Cargo had to fit inside the ship’s set parameters.
When he arrived in the extension, delayed a few minutes by a sparking panel near the air lock that joined the old and new, the outer hatch was open and Dysun’s thytrins were working the grapples, plucking the salvage out of the Firebreather’s pen.
“Pen’s too big to fit inside,” Almon explained before Cho could ask what the hell they were doing. Eyes locked on the screen, he had so many light receptors open very little of the pale yellow remained. “Don’t know what this guy found, Captain, but he found one fuk of a lot of it.”
The deck plates quivered as something big came under the influence of the artificial gravity on the other side of the inner hatch.
“Sorry, Captain.” Nadayki, the youngest of the three di’Taykan, flashed him a nervous smile, lime-green hair jerking back and forth in a nervous arc.
Cho smiled back. Nadayki’s trouble with the law had been the reason the three had initially gone on the run. The Taykan were stupid when it came to family loyalties. “You dent my ship and I’ll space you.”
“He will, too. Space you soon as look at you. Mackenzie Cho’s the meanest son of a bitch in this end of the galaxy.”
“How many times do I have to tell you to stop calling my mother names?” Cho said quietly as Nat Forester moved up to stand just behind his left shoulder, slate in hand.
“At least once more, Cap. Krisk says he needs condenser parts and Doc says if you pitch another field kitchen, he’s going to throw six kinds of fit.”
“That kitchen had been slagged.”
Nat shrugged. “He says he could have fixed it. And he likes the food.”
“The food is crap.”
“Not arguing, but Doc likes it and there’s always a market for kitchens. You’re letting your prejudices cut into profits.”
“It’s not prejudice. I know the food they turn out is crap.”
“And I know,” his quartermaster grunted, “that these two’d probably work faster if you weren’t peering over their shoulders.”
“Sucks to be them.”
In spite of the captain’s presence, or maybe because of it, the two di’Taykan worked full out for almost two hours, creating a complex three-dimensional jigsaw of captured salvage in order to fit it into the available space. Finally, Almon sighed and said, “Cargo’s locked and loaded, Captain.”
“Noted.” Cho raised his voice slightly; the comm pickups in the extension could be temperamental. “Huirre.”
“Captain.”
“Turn us toward home.” They’d kick on the Susumi drive after he and Nat had the cargo sorted, separated the crap from the cream, and ditched the crap.
“Aye, sir. Home it is.” The subtext—about fukking time—came through loud and clear, but they’d been roaming for a while, looking for a prize worth the trip, so he let it go.
“Cap and I going to fit in there?” Nat wondered, peering past Almon at his screen.
“No. Too tight.” Almon turned just far enough to wink at her, a Human gesture the di’Taykan had wholeheartedly adopted. “Tight’s good.”
Nat winked back. “Not arguing, kid.”
The di’Taykan were known as the most sexually indiscriminating species in known space, but tossing innuendo at Nat Forester put them above and beyond. Cho trusted Nat with his life, but he’d fuk Huirre first. And given that Huirre had been involved with a cartel that provided Human body parts to Krai kitchens, that was saying something.
“That’s not so much tight as wall to fukking wall,” Nat snorted, transferring her attention from Almon’s screen to her own. “Crowded enough we’ll have to use the eye for first sort.” She called up the controls on her slate one-handed, then ran the hand back through short gray hair. “Eye gives me fukking vertigo. Let’s just hope I don’t puke.”
“Don’t,” Cho told her, his own slate ready.
“Yes, sir, Cap. Because my stomach always does what you tell it.”
It was a good prize, Cho acknowledged as he guided the remote camera around and through what were clearly parts retrieved from a single destroyed battle cruiser. Looked like they’d scored some of the Marine package, too, he realized as the eye picked out