me to survive them?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“See any sign of molecular gray plastic aliens while you were in there?”
“No, but . . .”
“Then again, thank you.” Pushing head and arms through the correct holes of her sweater took longer than it should have, but eventually Torin managed it.
“You seem to be deliberately misunderstanding me. You’re not completely recovered. You need rest.”
“Or else?” she asked as Ceelin guided her feet into the leg holes in her underwear. Time spent in the close quarters of the Corps conquered nudity taboos; not that either Katrien or Rakva, with fur and feathers, would have cared had any lingered.
“Or else you will recover more slowly.”
“I can live with that.” One hand on Ceelin’s shoulder, she stood and used the other to drag her trousers up over her hips.
“This one cannot allow you to leave until the Wardens arrive.” He turned to the med tech, who checked her slate and shrugged.
“This one has no ETA.”
“I don’t have time to wait.” Slate on her belt, boots fastened, Torin took a careful step, didn’t fall flat on her face, and counted it a win.
“The Wardens will want to take your statement.”
“Presit can record it and send it back to the station.” One bright pink hand on the bulkhead and one on Ceelin’s shoulder, she could walk at almost a normal speed.
“Where are you going?” Presit demanded, scrambling to catch up.
“Do you have a ship?” She touched the top curve of the plastic chair as she passed by.
“Yes, I are having a ship, but . . .”
“Then that’s where we’re going.”
Crest still up, the doctor stepped between her and the hatch. “This one objects,” he began but stopped at the expression on Torin’s face.
“Did the Wardens tell you to detain me?”
“No, but . . .”
“Do I owe you for my treatment?”
If he’d had a lip, he’d have curled it. “Health care is a basic right for citizens of the Confederacy.”
“That’s what I thought. Move.”
He’d never been in the Corps, or he’d have moved a lot faster, but he still moved.
“This one needs your statement that you are released from this facility without this one’s approval,” he grumbled, slate held out.
“I understand that I am released from this facility without my attending physician’s approval,” Torin said as clearly as possible as she passed him.
“You are best letting her go,” she heard Presit say behind her. “She are not being a very nice person even on her good days. Ceelin!”
His shoulder tensed under Torin’s hand.
“I are hoping you are planning to come back for the camera?”
“Go on, kid.” Torin nudged him back toward the room, wondering just how much of her regaining consciousness he’d recorded. “I can manage.”
The long hall leading toward an open hatch with a red exit light above it seemed to be tilted forty-five degrees. Torin took a deep breath, got the hall straightened out about twenty degrees and figured fuk it, close enough. The series of open hatches along both sides of the bulkhead nearly defeated her, but her arms were just long enough to bridge the gaps.
Most of the facility’s other patients watched with interest as she lurched past their rooms. One shrieked. Torin ignored them all.
“The only reason the Wardens are not asking the medical facility to be detaining you,” Presit told her matter-of-factly, “are because they are assuming any reasonable being are planning on staying right where they are until the Wardens arrive.”
“Waste of time,” Torin grunted, swayed slightly, and found Presit’s shoulder suddenly under her flailing hand. She looked down to find the reporter looking up at her, teeth showing.
“You are assuming, in turn, that I are allowing you to use my ship.”
“I’m giving you one hell of a story.”
“Your opinion ...” Her muzzle wrinkled. “It are not buying me hurinca.”
Torin neither knew nor cared what hurinca was. “Your biggest stories have all involved me in some way.” And the polynumerous polyhydroxide alcoholyde shape-shifting molecular hive mind. There was a chance that the pirates were another one of their social experiments but, bottom line, who the fuk cared. The pirates had Craig. “This story is about the pirates, and it’ll be huge.”
“I are not seeing how.”
Torin pulled her lips back off her teeth in an expression that, in no way, resembled a smile. “I’m going to destroy them.”
Presit reached up to pat the hand on her shoulder. “Of course you are.”
She didn’t sound condescending—or no more condescending than usual. She sounded pleased.
Stumbling toward the docking ring, Torin learned that her patch had