The scanner pinged.
"We found debris?" Torin frowned. "That was fast." It was a hell of a lot faster than their first trip out. Vacuum being short of friction, objects in motion, like pieces blown from battle cruisers, tended to keep moving. Made them harder to find.
Usually.
"Damn!" Craig reached back, yanked her head down by his, and kissed her enthusiastically.
Torin grinned as she pulled away. "While I enjoyed the sitrep, I'm going to need more details."
"There's tech potential in this clump. Nat was right."
"I'm sorry I distrusted her."
"No, you're not."
Her grin broadened. "No, I'm not." Maintaining a little healthy distrust would go a long way to keeping them alive. "So, do we head to the clump?"
Craig shook his head. "Not yet. We give first tag a chance to object to us working those coordinates."
The CSA with the first tag could reject second tag's first three choices. Should a third CSO arrive, the approval of both previous tags had to be acquired. Torin couldn't decide if she appreciated the fact they had a system in place-given their whole my business is none of your business attitude-or if she was appalled by the inefficiency.
She made coffee while they waited. As she filled the first mug, Craig brought Promise's engines back on-line. She hadn't thought they'd been pinged. "No news is good news?"
His teeth flashed white as he smiled broadly. "Every damned time."
First tag's registered coordinates were behind the lopsided planetoid. Out of sight. Scanners blocked. Torin stood by the control panel, stared down at the scrolling numbers still registering the Susumi radiation, and tapped a fingernail lightly against her mug until Craig reached up, wrapped a hand around her wrist, and stopped her.
"What?" he demanded.
"They might not be answering because they're in trouble."
"Then we'd be picking up a distress call from the ship or the suit." He sat back and swept his free hand over the board. "No distress call."
True as far as it went, but she'd learned to trust her instincts. "Would pirates give them time to send a distress call?"
"A distress call'd have bugger all to do with the pirates; the ship'd send it automatically. Once he got close enough, Brian was up and aces finding the Firebreather," Craig added. "What took the time was Jan and Sirin. Here…" Still holding her wrist, he used his free hand to tap the edge of the small screen showing the steady blip of the other CSO's tag. "A registered tag but no distress call means the alleged pirates destroyed the ship completely but left behind some of the tagged cargo. Not likely, love."
"I know." They'd discuss the endearment another time. "But it wouldn't hurt to go check on them."
"It'd use resources…"
"Then take it out of my share," she snapped.
"Torin…" He sighed, tightened his grip slightly, and shook her arm-not quite hard enough to spill her coffee. Smart man. "… I know this is hard for you to get your head around, but you're not responsible for every fukking thing that happens in known space. Most people, they don't need you to ride to the rescue. They can live their lives all sunshine and puppies without you giving them…"
The corners of his mouth twitched up, and Torin almost heard him say, Why not… in the pause.
"… context."
The little plastic aliens, the polynumerous polyhydroxide alcoholyde shape-shifting molecular hive mind, had deep scanned both their brains-hers and Craig's-during the Recon investigation of the unidentified alien ship known as Big Yellow. The organic plastic bastards had then hitched a ride inside their skulls in order to give context to observations about the centuries-long war between the Confederation and the Primacy. A war the little plastic aliens had admitted to both starting and maintaining. A lot of Marines had died while they'd been along for the ride, and sometimes Torin would sit in the control chair, listen to Craig sleeping in the bunk behind her, watch the stars, and find herself second-guessing every choice she'd made since that day on Big Yellow. Wondering if it had actually been her making them.
CSOs were able to doubt the lives they'd lived, but gunnery sergeants accepted responsibility for their decisions and moved on. They didn't dwell. And, yeah, she'd left the Corps, but the Corps would never really leave her.
Twisting her hand above Craig's grip, Torin poured the coffee into his lap. They'd gotten dressed before emerging from Susumi space, so it didn't make as much of an impression as it could have.
"Fukking hell, Torin!"
Still, it was a fresh pot. Hadn't cooled much.
Torin knew a lot of different ways to kill people. She could come up with three ways, off the top of her head, using the mug as a weapon. All things considered, a crotch of coffee rated minus five on a scale of one to ten.
When she stepped back, Craig hung on. She could have broken his hold. She didn't. Minus five or not, she figured she owed him that much.
He met her gaze, ignoring the liquid pooling in his lap. "Okay, it's too soon to joke about context. I'm sorry. If it means that much to you, we'll go check on the other ship."
My business is none of your business.
HE suits screamed for help if their wearers got into trouble they couldn't get out of. Beacons in the suits were slaved to the ships and when they went off, the ship would go off as well, extending the suit's range. If the ship was damaged, its own distress call would sound.
The Promise wasn't picking up a distress call.
But she was picking up registered CSO tags.
Pirates would take the tagged debris, or what the hell was the point of being a pirate.
"No, you're right…"
"If I'm right," he interrupted, "why am I absorbing caffeine through my ass?"
Four ways with the coffee mug. "You're right," she repeated, "that I need to start thinking more like a salvage operator."
Craig nodded, relaxing slightly. "Without a distress call, they wouldn't thank us for dropping by."
That surprised a laugh out of her. "I was a Marine. I didn't expect to get thanked."
The battle debris had drifted into an interlinked mass, the smaller, more salvageable pieces fused to huge sheets of twisted metal and slabs of ceramic. Given the parts she could see, given the protection offered by the large, outer pieces of hull, Torin was willing to bet her pension that the odds of finding DNA remnants would be high. Maybe not the specific Marines she counted as her friends, but Marines.
"This first trip out, we eyeball the puzzle pieces," Craig reminded her, waiting by the air lock as Torin checked his helmet seals. "We tag what'll give us the best resale price, maybe set a few small charges to break things up so that we can get a better look inside. DNA scans come later." He checked her seals in turn, then moved his hands to her shoulders and left them there. "We're not wearing propulsion, so we stay tethered to the ship or the end of the grapple at all times. Eyeballs on where I'm attached before you unhook. It's safer if we're not both off the ship at the same time."
The urge to respond to this latest repetition of common sense masquerading as instruction with a noncommittal "Yes, sir." was intense, but that wasn't a dynamic she wanted to set up with Craig-he'd earned her respect a long time ago. And, in all fairness, in spite of her previous performance out by the pens, she understood why he erred on the side of caution. She'd been equally unwilling to trust his skills, all evidence to the contrary, when he'd been on her turf. Since the CSOs didn't have any kind of basic training to meld individuals into a unit, and would likely be appalled by the thought, all she could do toward being thought one of them, was give it time.
So she said, "You think eight charges will be enough?" They were each carrying four.