“I are not doubting that,” Presit snorted. “But I are also not doubting there are being truths at their core and a story people are wanting to hear.”
“It’s not a story I can tell.” It had been a military exercise, and for all the law said full disclosure to the press, the brass had kept the final facts need to know only. As Presit opened her mouth, Torin held up a hand. “But when I can tell it, I’ll tell it to you. Okay?”
The lights were low enough that Presit hadn’t put on her glasses, but her eyes were as unreadable as the mirrored lenses would have been. After a long moment she nodded, fluffed her ruff with her claws, and said, “Okay.”
Progress. As her head began to tip forward of its own volition, Torin stretched back out on the bunk. The random moments of weakness came less frequently but were still a disturbing reminder that she wasn’t yet at a hundred percent. The one good thing about time wasted in Susumi was that it gave her time to finish healing.
“I are hating this.”
Pedro, or a member of his family, had scratched Sonrisa de señora Luck sobre nosotros in the painted metal above the bunk. “You hate what?”
“Waiting. We are having gone through the information the CSOs are sending us. We are having researched the Prospect Processing Station, not that there are being much available information to research. We are having decided I are being distraction while you are being muscle.”
It hadn’t so much been a decision, Torin amended slightly, as it had been the only possible division of labor.
“Now we are having nothing to do. Unless you are telling . . .”
“No.” The plastic trim around the small light over the bunk still had no reaction to her touch. She closed her eyes. “Sleeping now.”
“I are knowing why you are sleeping!”
“Still healing. Go talk to Ceelin.”
“Oh, no. I are knowing that you are trying to be ignoring me ...”
Torin had spent a high percentage of her adult life sleeping in war zones and not even Presit could match an artillery barrage for either volume or duration. Although she tried.
The computer countdown ended and Craig felt the ship’s vibration change as they came out of Susumi space. With his last meal sitting like salvage in his stomach, he prayed to the gods of his childhood that with him and his codes on board, the ship had gone to ground rather than gone hunting for new prey. If he were captain and he had a crewmember he didn’t trust and had just picked up a new captive he needed to brutalize, he’d put that crewmember back in the room with the chair. Only, this time, the new crewmember would be the one standing. And that new crewmember would cross a line they couldn’t cross back or they’d take a short walk out the air lock. Craig liked to think he knew what his choice would be, but he was honest enough with himself to realize it wasn’t something he could know until he actually had to make the decision.
Kill or die.
Sounded like the same choice Torin had made for years.
Close, but not quite.
The locked door said Cho didn’t trust him. That maybe Cho figured injuries be damned, if let loose, Craig would overpower the entire crew and fly the ship to the nearest Warden’s office. Torin might—fuk it, Torin would—but he wasn’t Torin.
But if Cho thought three days of minimal contact would soften him up, the captain knew sweet fuk all about how salvage operators worked. Before Torin, Craig’s default had been two or three tendays with no one to talk to but Promise and the space between the stars.
Doc had brought him a pair of overalls on his last visit in to check his knee. They stank of di’Taykan and Craig reacted to them just being in the room.
“You wouldn’t fit into mine or Nat’s or the captain’s,” Doc had growled, his hands gentler on the bruised flesh than his voice. “You’re too damned tall. Rest of the crew’s Krai or di’Taykan. You do the math.”
Sure, might have been as simple as that.
Might have been Almon continuing to fuk with him.
Either way, he hadn’t put them on. Not like he was packing anything the crew hadn’t seen. Nat’s casual lechery as she delivered his food—blatant enough to distract him as he ran his fingers over the gray plastic tray—made him reconsider; even the dubious shield of pheromone-drenched