“If we can ping them, distance doesn’t matter. Not everyone sends out a tourist brochure, but, if nothing else, we should be receiving information about docking and fees. And what’s more, I’m reading ships, but their registries aren’t coming up. There’s no way to tell if the Heart of Stone is there.”
“It’s there.” The Heart was there, and Craig was there. Because they had to be.
“If we can ping them . . .” Mashona began.
“They can ping us.” Werst agreed.
“And they’ll get what I want them to,” Ressk said, smiling broadly. “Which is the same as what they’re giving out.”
“I wonder how close they’ll let us get?”
They were still moving fast, riding the exit surge, maintaining their emergent speed until they knew where they were going.
“No point in talking to us until they can stop us,” Werst pointed out, “and unless they’ve got some big fukking guns, we need to be a little closer for . . .”
“Hi there.” The young di’Taykan male on the screen had hair so light a blue it was nearly white and his pale eyes looked paler still given the amount of black they were lined with. Makeup had turned his skin the same shade as his hair—Torin assumed it was makeup—and he had two black rings piercing the center of his lower lip. “I’m pulling sweet fuk all off your signal, so you’ve got three minutes to make your case before I blow you to kingdom come. Which, by the way, is not an actual place but an oldEarth term meaning up. So, three minutes before I blow you up.”
Torin centered herself on the screen. “I heard Vrijheid Station was a refuge from government bullshit.”
“Really.” He leaned a little closer to the pickup and grinned. Torin had never see a di’Taykan with dimples. “Who’d you hear that from?”
“Krai named Firrg.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I had my foot on her throat at the time.”
“Well, that endears you to me, trin, but there’s . . .” His hair stilled and he frowned. “Wait, do I know you?”
Torin smiled.
“Fuk me. I do know you. You’re that gunnery sergeant who had the little gray aliens in your brain and then got captured and found out the little gray aliens were in the plastic and actually making us all run around like we were neivins or something. I saw the vids. You were like crazy kick ass. Seriously, fuk me.”
“Little hard from way out here.”
“Right.” His hair flipped forward over his face, then back—like his whole expression had blinked. “Okay, there’s a lock free on the delta arm. You’re going to have to give control over to the docking computer if you want to come any closer. We can’t risk you ramming the station.”
“That happens a lot?”
“Hasn’t yet. But if it did, Big Bill would fukking space me.”
“How do I know I’ll get control back?”
“We start randomly taking ships over and it’s bad for business, isn’t it? Big Bill doesn’t like things being bad for business. You leave here in good standing, and you get control back about when you would be leaving any station. Your standing ends up being not so good, well, you don’t leave and you don’t actually care about who’s flying your ship.” He glanced down at his screens. “Okay, really, you have to give control over now or you’re fukked. And not in a fun I think you’re fukking amazing because you did that whole plastic alien thing in your underwear kind of way.”
Teeth gritted, Torin sighed and surrendered control.
The Second Star shuddered as her forward jets fired to slow her approach.
“Wow, nice firewalls. I can’t get squat off you.” He sounded honestly impressed. “Look, when you get in, I’m pretty much guaranteeing Big Bill’s going to want to talk to you, being who you are and all, so if it takes a while to get the lock open, that’s why. Oh and don’t forget ...” He leaned closer to the screen, one hand dropping down off camera into his lap. “. . . seriously, trin, fuk me.”
And the screen went black.
“They listening in?”
Ressk snorted. “They’re trying to.”
“Sounds like you’ve got a fan, Gunny.” Mashona stretched out her legs, crossed her booted feet at the ankles, and grinned. “He’s kind of cute in a slightly crazy way. What’s trin mean?”
“Beats me. Must be new slang.”
“Context makes it sounds like sweetheart, or babe.”
“Yeah, well, he’s all yours,” Torin told her, keeping most of her attention on the boards. “My focus remains on Craig.”