Burnett Georges emerged from the
side room, carrying a metal tray. It was
apparently hot; he wore a thermal protective glove on the hand holding the
tray. He saw captain Lerner shortly
afterward and blinked in surprise.
“Captain! We did not expect you… you are welcome, of
course. Please, come in. We were about to have tea.” Burnett set the tray down on a wire mesh rack
on a cleared workbench. Evgeny could see
small, golden, rectangular cakes glowing in their individual cups. He recognized the tray as a mold for metal
casting. Hopefully, the baker had
cleaned that equipment thoroughly before repurposing it.
Burnett did not wait for Evgeny’s
response before calling out, “Zenaida!
We have a guest! Bring three
cups!”
His cousin’s voice answered from
another room further back in the engineering area. “Oh?
Who is it?”
Evgeny decided to answer for
himself, “It’s captain Lerner. Look, I
was just stopping by to give you an update on our situation. No need to set a place for me.”
Burnett fixed him with a patronizing
look, “It’s no trouble. After all,
business is best discussed over tea and cakes.
Sit, join us, and have a bite before you’re called away again.”
Evgeny once again had that feeling
of being only nominally in charge. He
supposed being welcomed was better than being avoided. Still, he had to suppress suspicions about
the safety of offered food and drink. If
anyone was going to drug or poison him, though, the Georges were low on the
list. Their power and privileges
descended from NuRikPo; as long as they kept the Zig engineer happy, they
maintained their upper-deck status and shares.
Zenaida Georges entered the room
bearing one of the signs of that privilege.
She held three simple porcelain teacups on saucers. Expertly balancing the dishware, she sat one
cup in front of Evgeny, then placed the other two in front of her cousin and herself. Burnett pulled up a tall stool
and sat down, sniffing at the dark liquid in his cup.
Evgeny followed suit. The ‘tea’ was a different creature than the
pale brew he was accustomed to. It was
quite opaque, almost as black as coffee.
It smelled like a dozen different plants had sacrificed various fragrant
parts of their anatomy to its creation.
The smell was not unpleasant, but it was also difficult to classify as
‘pleasant’. It was too complex.
“Sugar?” Zenaida asked, and Evgeny’s
attention was drawn from the strange drink to the equally intriguing
woman. Her hair was nearly the same
color as the tea. Her skin was somewhere
between Evgeny’s pallor and Katy Olu’s burnished ebony, a brown highlighted
with gold and green. Evgeny had never
seen the shade among other Humans, not even in videos. Her facial features were also more expressive
than most Humans from his experience. She
shared her coloration, wide eyes, narrow nose, and full lips with her
cousin.
The two humans lived together,
worked together, and clearly, cooked and dined together. The speculation on the ship was that they
slept together, as well. Certainly,
neither had been intimate with any other crew member. Such an affair would have been impossible to
keep secret. No one had seen or heard
either of them seeking companionship at any port of call, either, though
discretion was somewhat easier off-ship.
Evgeny had even tried to drop
hints about his interest. Zenaida had completely ignored
his more subtle advances and politely changed the subject when he made his
attraction more clear. Evgeny could have
forced the issue, possibly even forced her compliance, but from his experience
such behavior had steep costs. He would
rather have a loyal, friendly, and untouchable comrade than an angry, bitter, and
mutinous conquest.
So what if she preferred
family? The truth was probably that the Georges
just enjoyed one another’s company and maybe even had cultural restrictions
against ‘fornication’. Both of those
traits – close family ties and intentional abstinence – were rare enough to
most of the rowdies on board the Scape
Grace to be considered improbable in combination. Incest was somehow a more likely
explanation.
Evgeny squinted in thought, then
responded, “Um, what’s recommended?”
“Sugar,” Zenaida replied,
decisively. She went to a drawer and
withdrew a brushed steel cylinder.
Evgeny would have assumed it held something requiring protective containment: perhaps chemical samples or a computer
component. Instead, it held crystalline white cubes, compressed
blocks of sucrose. Zenaida dropped five
cubes in her cup and Evgeny’s.
Burnett grunted in playful
derision. “If this were proper chai, it
would be sweet enough without help.”
“Chai is tea flavored with spices:
cinnamon, cloves, cardamom…” Zenaida explained for Evgeny’s benefit, “We picked
up a couple of kilos at our last landing.”
“Anchor? Yes, I remember the trade hub. No idea they had Human spices there.” Evgeny held the cup to his nose, trying to
appreciate the separate notes that clanged against his receptors so
harshly.
Zenaida nodded, swirling the tea in
her cup to mix in the dissolving sugar.
“They had probably traveled a long way even to get there… like in the
early days of cross-continental trade on Terra.
Spices were as good as money, sometimes better. Dried well, they could last for a very long
journey and still be potent.”
“This was a premix, though,” Burnett
interrupted, “Packaged for commercial sale.
They still charged double the store price. Imagine what actual fresh cardamom would have
cost!”
Zenaida gave her cousin an
exaggerated frown, but added, “He’s right, it’s only a weak reminder of
home. If it were proper, we’d have cream, or at least milk. NuRikPo won’t even let us synthesize casein,
much less lactose and butterfat.”
Evgeny smiled indulgently at their
banter, understanding only part of the discussion. He sipped the liquid and found it as bitter
as expected, but pleasantly floral and sweet underneath. The aftertaste was actually better than the
initial taste. He could understand how a
little fat would improve its texture and taste, smoothing out the rough edges
and forcing the aromatics to linger.
Reluctantly, the captain shifted
topics toward his original objective for the visit. “I wanted to let you both know how matters
stand. We haven’t heard back from
NuRikPo or doctor Olu. I know ‘Po told
you he was going to investigate a completely foreign ship; since they’ve been
inside, we haven’t received any communications.
The Ningyo claim they’re just not picking up. I have my doubts. Either way, you two are our engineering staff
until further notice.”
Burnett tested the little cakes,
then upended them onto the cooling rack.
He offered one to Evgeny, who declined with an upraised hand. With a shrug, Burnett bit into one of the
rectangular pastries, then blinked with pain as his mouth was scalded.
Evgeny continued, “You won’t just be
placeholders. The Ningyo have
commandeered our ship. We’re under their
control; their leader demanded my codes and is sitting in my chair. They’re using the ‘Grace to raid for supplies for the foreign ship, along with
another salvager they’ve turned pirate.
We’re likely to see some combat and probably some damage. Hopefully, they don’t get us killed.”
Burnett stopped with cake
half-eaten. Zenaida was also wide-eyed
with surprise. She furrowed her
brow. “Why raiding? Why can’t they buy whatever the other ship
needs?”
“That’s what I asked,” Evgeny commiserated.
“Apparently, they have to get the goods fast and without drawing
attention to their alien friend. Friend,
they kept calling it. Like they were doing a favor
for a comrade.”
“Anyway,” he returned to the
briefing, “You’ll need to finish up whatever repairs ‘Po had left incomplete,
then start preparing for emergency duty.
We’ll have maybe five or six days before we return to the system.” Evgeny sipped his tea again. It had cooled enough to allow for a full
swallow. The warmth and sugar reminded
his stomach that he had not eaten a full meal in several hours. He decided to take one of the cakes to keep
him going until he could raid the galley.
It was excellent. Somehow,
without dairy or eggs, Burnett had managed to produce a soft, yellow-brown
pastry with a distinct citrus and butter aroma.
It even had a crisp outer ‘shell’.
Some areas of science had more beautiful payoffs than others.
While Evgeny finished the cake and
reached for another, Burnett asked, “How
do they intend to keep us from getting killed?”
Evgeny swallowed his first bite of
the second cake hastily. “I’m not sure
they have a plan. I’m hoping they
do. Still, I warned their captain that
we won’t sit quietly for a suicide mission.
If things look too dangerous, he’ll either pull us out or have a second
fight inside the ship.” That was exaggerating
somewhat, but Evgeny wanted his crew to be ready to rebel when given the
signal.
With a burst of inspiration, Evgeny
asked, “Could I get a compad? I’ll give
you the codes for full access to ship’s stores, in case you need something for
repairs, plus the door codes if there’s a breach anywhere. It might be too late to pass those on, after
trouble starts.”
Zenaida took a few steps across the
room to a shelving unit, picking out a reasonably contemporary compad and
flicking it to life. Evgeny shifted
himself to one side, not coincidentally cutting off the view of the camera
watching engineering. He typed at the
pad’s surface, spelling out: Private comm
in storage bay 3e. Not on official
circuit. Send messages to me or Luuboh
there. Possibly receive there. Be ready to cut out bridge access to systems
on my order. Set up automated kill
switches where possible. He pushed
the pad, screen glowing, back across the workbench.
The advantage of the portable
computer pads was that they were not linked to the ship’s network. That isolation was intentional, to keep some
resources safely insulated from any power interruptions or computer errors that
might affect Scape Grace’s own
nervous system. That failsafe held a
second advantage now, allowing for private conversations safe from Jolly’s
eavesdropping.
Zenaida picked up the compad and
nodded at the screen. “Thank you. We appreciate your trust.”
Burnett looked at her quizzically
and started to open his mouth, but shut it again at a shake of his cousin’s
head. He covered his confusion with a
large mouthful of tea, wincing as the heat stung his previously burnt
palate.
Evgeny pushed back from the
workbench-turned-tea table. He picked up
a third cake for his travels and finished his cup with a deep, sugar-gritted
swallow. Nodding to Burnett and then to
Zenaida, he replied, “Thank you for
the tea… and the cakes. I won’t tell
Luuboh, or it might get jealous, but this is the best cooking I’ve had in
days.”
“We have a lot of spare time,”
Burnett jibed, “or we did, up until this past week. Any chance things will get boring again,
anytime soon?”
“Not likely, but we can hope,”
Evgeny shot back.
He
was starting to feel the stimulant effects from the tea. That, plus the cakes, were curbing his hunger. With
a wave and a reluctant last glance at Zenaida, captain Lerner left engineering
to follow the halls back to his cabin.
Rather than a grim or thoughtful look, the woman’s face had held a thin
smile of amusement. For him? Or just wry humor at their strange
situation?
She
and her cousin were a puzzle. That probably
made her more attractive. Evgeny knew
himself well enough by now to recognize his own need to understand and control
his environment. A woman he could not
easily classify and predict was a challenge.
The
Georges were the only two of his crew without a clear reason to join a criminal
enterprise. They had come aboard after
talking to some of the combat crew at a space station, thinking that they
were booking passage to the next system over.
Originally, the grunts had planned to rob the ‘couple’. One or two might have harbored thoughts of
taking advantage of Zenaida. The
resulting scuffle below-decks ended with one Mauraug enjoying a punctured lung
and two Humans cradling crushed testes.
Burnett had suffered a broken arm, himself, but his hidden pen-laser had
warded off the rest of the crew well enough to spare him a broken neck.
It
had taken Evgeny and Soloth a few hours to sort out the damages and the
conflicting stories. In the end, the
Georges chose to join the crew rather than be marooned on the nearest planetoid. He could have shot them outright, Evgeny
supposed. He always had to bear that in
mind as a possible solution. Thank
goodness they had chosen to enlist, instead.
They
were certainly qualified; in fact, they were probably more qualified than the bruisers they had held off. Besides being able to handle a fight, they
were both trained in space station maintenance, a background which translated
well enough into the daily repair needs of the Scape Grace. NuRikPo had
enlisted them for his grunt work, in
return training them in more advanced sciences to make them more useful
minions. The Zig would hardly admit to
being a mentor, but he certainly had a couple of devoted graduate students.
On the average, piracy did pay
better than station maintenance. It might
be irregular in spots, probably more dangerous overall, and certainly less
stable an existence, but it was much
more exciting. Probably smelled better,
too, from what Evgeny had experienced of the average orbital station. The two travelers were definitely getting to
see much more of the universe than they might have as laborers.
That still didn’t explain why they
were so cheerful most of the time. Idle time tended to wear on the more active
members of the crew, fraying nerves and leading to hostility, sometimes violence. In a crisis, the senior crew were typically
stressed: Katy was absolutely nasty when too many patients piled up at
once. Soloth’s level of cruelty tended
to increase with the number of simultaneous transgressors. By contrast, Burnett and Zenaida seemed
positive whether work was slow or constant. Maybe the pair had found their preferred niche
in life; maybe that was why they had stayed on.
Evgeny himself wasn’t sure if he
would prefer piracy, given a real choice.
It was the life he had been offered.
Rather, he had chosen that existence versus accepting that his family, friends, and even
home were an acceptable sacrifice in the name of ‘civilization’. His grudge against the Collective had
mellowed after a few years following the death of Locust Colony, but by then,
he was a known criminal fugitive. The
options now were continued flight or surrender for permanent imprisonment. That was an even poorer choice.
In that light, he was envious of the
Georges. Granted, once aboard, their
choices had been equally lopsided, but they could
still ask to quit at any time. They were not known as criminals,
nor even as the accomplices they were.
Evgeny would have allowed them to leave.
He had no concern that the two might talk to Collective or even Terran
security… first, they weren’t the type to turn informant, in his opinion, and
second, they would be incriminating themselves if they talked. They wanted to be here. Evgeny could not be sure he could still say
the same about himself.
As Evgeny reached his cabin,
he realized something that churned his stomach.
Jolly had the crew manifest. Even
if all went well and the Ningyo left their ship alive, it had the names of
everyone aboard. That meant that the
Georges would no longer be unknown.
Everyone associated with the Scape
Grace could lose the option of quiet retirement.
Well, that was just one more reason
that the Ningyo shouldn’t be allowed to leave, wasn’t it?