Calm down, Haimey.
Habren’s avenues of attack were limited, if they were in with the pirates, because they had to maintain some kind of deniability. Especially where Singer was concerned, with him suddenly a member of government and of significant interest to the Synarche.
So I felt like once we came to the agreement, we were in a better condition. Habren could pass word around to other stations that we were bad citizens, but coming from an outpost like this, and with our prior reputation for plain dealing, it wouldn’t do us too much harm. They could try to arrest us for reckless driving. They could take their own sweet time about deciding whether to fuel and supply us for the run home, and then about actually performing the fueling and supplying.
For now, though, we signed off on the preliminary deal—that Habren was going to research the logistics of allowing us to run Singer home—and I made sure a copy of the info went into the mail system before I left their office. Packet mail was an encoded, AI-protected, Synarche-run system. It could probably be hacked by somebody better than me, but I didn’t think it could be hacked tracelessly, and if the contract and the record that we had proposed bringing Singer in ourselves existed and reached the Core before we—presumably moving faster—did . . .
Well, with a little luck, they might come looking if we got lost.
It was possible that Habren could keep the mail from going through at all. That was a level of dysfunction that I sincerely hoped we wouldn’t have to contend with, though. We might just have already lost, if that were the case.
? ? ?
After the near tropicality of the stationmaster’s office, the Goodlaw’s office was absolutely delightful. I did not so much walk as float in, as the gravity this far upwheel was pretty slight, which made me a lot more comfortable. And I floated in not knowing what to expect, and found myself at once enchanted.
It’s considered polite, in varied-climate habitats such as stations and multispecies hospitals, to warn your guest if they might be entering an environment that could prove hazardous to their species. Ox breathers, in general, could manage each other’s habitats—at least in space, where the super-Earth life-forms made do with vastly undercompensating approximations of gravity, since the alternative would have been spinning stations so fast that they would be challenged not to fly to bits. Fortunately, high-gravity types tended to be pretty tough creatures, albeit with a tendency to succumb to the bends.
The station’s Goodlaw was the opposite of one of those: an ox breather, and one who liked a supersaturated environment by human standards. Senso told me when I walked in that ox was at 33% of the atmosphere, which explained why absolutely everything inside the office was nonflammable. The temperature was balmy, the air dryish, and the whole office suffused with a pleasant, indirect light.
Based on that, and how the walls were hung with broad nets meant to resemble interwoven vines, I was pretty sure that I was about to be confronted by a—
—two-meter praying mantis, more or less.
Many-faceted eyes poked out from behind a privacy curtain, followed closely by a slender protothorax and a pair of folded raptorial limbs, along with a pair of more delicate manipulators. It advanced a few delicate steps on its long, fragile legs—the homeworld of this syster species was low-gravity—and I clenched my fists in my pockets and tried very hard to control my atavistic terror. It wasn’t going to eat me, but my limbic system was certain of the opposite of that.
Its name, in a terrible transliteration, was Goodlaw Cheeirilaq, or that was what it said in the English portion of the sign by the door, and it was a Rashaqin, one of the most technologically established and gentlest of the systers, and never mind that it looked like something that would eat a meter-and-a-half-long wasp for dinner.
It seemed to have an ovipositor, so I guessed it was female, but having no idea how gender constructs worked in Rashaqin society, I decided to just keep thinking of it as an it. Enough other critters have called me an it since I left the clade—where they would have taken grave offense—that it’s become just another pronoun. There are more important things to fuss about in space than whether the whatchamacallit’s translator system is telling it you’re a them or an it or a whatchamacallit yourself.
I bowed, an act of respect that seemed to be understood, as the Goodlaw returned the gesture with a lowering on its head and forethorax. As it came into sight, the resemblance to an Earth insect I’d only seen in lucky pet cages on some other ships both strengthened and faded.
My new acquaintance had broad wings that were folded under light green sheaths along its spine. But it walked on six legs in addition to its manipulators and raptorial forelimbs. Its little hooked feet anchored it neatly to the webworks, though it seemed at home in the very light gravity.
“I don’t have an appointment,” I said. “But your door was open.”
The insect stridulated, Greetings, friend Dz. I am forewarned that you have police business for me to consider.
Transferring the documentation was easy; I just forwarded senso clips of my exploration of the factory ship and the two pirate attacks to the Goodlaw. Cheeirilaq asked me to make myself comfortable while it reviewed the documents, which didn’t take it as long as I would have expected. Probably it had AI assistance.
These are unedited?
“Nearly,” I said. “Our shipmind removed 3.5 seconds containing proprietary information necessary to our salvage operations, which we are not required to release.” That proprietary information, loosely so termed, was the pinprick.
I see you had not filed for a permit for this salvage operation.
“There was no appropriate jurisdiction to file in, as we were in unincorporated space.”
The Goodlaw knew, and I knew, that we could have filed with our station of departure. It tilted its head, studying me with all its multifaceted eyes, and stridulated something that my senso returned as untranslatable. I assumed it was a thinking noise.
You won’t mind a ship inspection, then?
“We have no contraband.” A rush of relief: we didn’t have any contraband, and I was profoundly glad of it. “Our only interest in the factory ship we found was to bring it back and turn it in, and if we hadn’t encountered the pirates we would have probably brought it to the nearest Synarche Space Guard station.”
Then you will not mind a ship inspection.
I consulted with Singer. Whatever Connla was doing, he’d ducked out of senso, which made me just as happy, but in his absence Singer and I constituted a quorum.
“As long as our shipmind can observe the inspection and record it, of course not.”
That seems reasonable.
Either the Goodlaw was a lot less corrupt—or power-trippy—than the stationmaster, or it was a lot more subtle about it.
This appears to be artificial gravity.
“It does, doesn’t it?”
What you have shown me looks like magic, Synizen Dz.
I grinned. “There is no such thing as magic. There’s only physics we insufficiently understand.” I took a deep breath, and decided to trust it at least a little bit further. One way or another, it was likely to know about the pirate ship docked on the ring already. Whether revealing that we also knew, and had had a past encounter with said ship, was likely to get us into trouble . . . that, I couldn’t say.
So I gambled.
I said, “By the way, the ship that took a potshot at us is docked here.”
Fascinating. The mantid rubbed its raptorial arms together.
There was an awkward silence. Well, awkward for me, anyway. The Goodlaw spent it regarding me with compound eyes, utterly unmoving.
Well, maybe it was waiting for me. I decided to risk it. “Now, sorry to be so blunt, but Habren is playing games with me on the topic. Will this data pay for a refuel?”
Pay is an archaic concept. But yes, this justifies further resource allocation to your project. I will speak to Habren. I believe they will agree to a dispensation of fuel and consumables.
Without even a pause, it reached out with a manipulator and opened a com channel. Stunning me, Cheeirilaq patched me in as well.
There were some indistinguishable noises, and then a hum through the senso. I sat quietly and listened while Cheeirilaq spoke with Habren, demanding with infinite politeness that Singer and crew be expedited on our way as merrily as possible, and with as much alacrity.
If you insist, I can probably justify fuel for that, Habren admitted, after what I decided was a grumpy pause.