Red glared at her. “You know, you can be a real pain in the ass sometime.”
“So?” Ferret held up one clawed hand. “You want real pain there?”
That forced a reluctant laugh out of Red. “Hell, you’d do it, too.” He shook his head. “Okay, I guess I can be a pain, too. Guess that’s why we get along so good.”
“Said well, yes. Now, about job?”
“Yeah. Trouble is, ‘minor’ can mean anything with the Ateil, anything from, oh, a recalibration of the heating system to maybe replacing or rebuilding some major component.”
“Ek.”
“Exactly. But as you say, money is money. So let’s go see what the Birds want.”
It wasn’t easy to judge the size or scale of a ship that was docked to a station, but from what Ferret could see of it, the Ateil freighter was illogically streamlined—illogical, because a spacecraft had no need to fight against the friction of an atmosphere. Not so illogical, Ferret thought, if its owners were bird-types.
But the four Ateil waiting for them looked more like reptile-types, tall and fine-boned bipeds but with narrow, almost serpentine heads topped with feathery crests. There was the hint of what could have been either very fine scales or very fine down on creamy-pale face and limbs. Their coveralls… Ferret assumed that the colorful layers of fabric were coveralls. Birds, after all, maybe, imitating the bright plumes their species no longer had.
From lighter gravity world and maybe weaker here? Ferret speculated, and stored that possible fact away.
At first glance, the four looked absolutely alike. But Ferret, used to finding the difference between humans, noted that there were definite differences in the coloring of the Ateil clothing: yellow predominant, blue predominant, green predominant, and purple predominant. Status or job rankings, maybe.
Red, meanwhile, was proving himself a better actor than Ferret would ever have imagined, showing nothing at all in his face or body language but professional interest. “Mech Central sent us,” he said without emotion, flashing his credentials—and Ferret belatedly remembered to show hers as well. “What seems to be the problem?”
The Ateils’ stiff, almost beaklike lips couldn’t sneer, but sneers were implicit as they glanced at each other.
“This is a substandard station,” Yellow Ateil said to the others.
“They send us these beings,” Purple Ateil agreed.
A muscle in Red’s jaw twitched, and Ferret said hastily, before he could speak, and in her most charming voice, “If so substandard this, why bend you down to learn Standard speech? Come, please, the problem, so we may fix it and you be gone.”
She caught Red’s quick sideways glance, a glint of wry humor in his eyes.
“We wish others,” Purple Ateil said, not quite to the two mechs.
“Sorry,” Red drawled. “We’re what you get. My partner said it: Tell us the problem, we’ll fix it, and you can get out of here.”
Ferret could have sworn she heard an Ateil whisper, “Unlucky color.”
What? Red’s hair? Yes, that, certainly. No red on the Ateil.
Oh, joy. Superstitious, too.
But Purple Ateil unbent enough to point out the problem, which turned out to be, yes, a major job, broken parts that had broken other parts. Wonderful.
The only good side to this job was that the work space was small, which meant that Ferret fit and Red was the one sent to get this gear or that component.
Keep him away from Ateil as much as possible.
It also meant that Ferret could eavesdrop while she worked. For the most part, the Ateil chattered and twittered in their own language, but every now and again, she caught snatches in Standard, just enough for Ferret to learn that there was no love lost between Purple and Yellow. The sort of quarrel that could build up between two beings who’d been cooped up together in a cramped ship for too long.
It spilled over onto outsiders, too. Red, passing components on to Ferret, who was wedged into a work space small even for her, said something about, “Can’t expect my partner to work like this very long.”
Purple Ateil snapped at him, “You will work till the job is done!”
“Hey, hey, we don’t leave a job unfinished. But we also don’t like that tone, you know what I mean?”
“Red!” Ferret hissed. But he was between her and the Ateil, and she couldn’t get out of the cramped little corner.
“Ah, yes,” Yellow told Purple, “leave the help alone.”
Purple said something harsh-sounding in the Ateil language, and then turned back to Red. “You come and go, and yet nothing is completed. Can it be that you work deliberately slowly to earn more?”
Ferret, distracted, yelped as she pinched her finger. Shaking it, she snapped, “Try working in here! Try, and see how fast you work!”
Purple sneered as much as an Ateil’s rigid face could manage, “Perhaps it is skill you lack.”
“What—why—you—”
Red moved between her and the Ateil. “Calm down,” he warned. To Purple, he drawled, “Look, I’m not big on social graces, and I’m not going to give you any pretty words. I don’t like you, and you’ve made it pretty clear you don’t like us, either. That said, Ferret and I are good mechs. You can look up our records if you want proof. And we’re working as fast as we safely can, so we don’t have to be in each other’s company any longer than we need to be.”
The Ateil reared back, narrow nostrils flaring. “Arrogance! Human arrogance!”
“Red,” Ferret said uneasily.
He ignored her. “Well, hell, you’re free to hire someone else—”
“Red!”
He held up a silencing hand. “—but that’s going to cause a delay, you know. A really bad delay, probably, when the other mechs hear about this. Most of them are human, too. Might not find any of them free to help you for, oh, maybe a station month or more.”
Purple’s crest shot up. “Were you one of the True People, I would see you dead for such a threat!”
“Hell, look at this, a human’s not even good enough to kill. Isn’t that—”
“Red!” Ferret dug a claw into his thigh. With a curse, he whirled to her, and she said mildly, “This work is done.”
To do the Ateil credit, Purple didn’t argue over the amount due, merely signed over the proper amount and then turned his back on the mechs. Ferret couldn’t exactly drag her partner away short of literally digging her claws into him, but she tightened her fingers on his arm just enough, and got him moving, off the ship and back into the station.
Red delicately worked his arm free from her determined grip. “Well, all things considered, I think that went pretty well.”
“Heh.”
“Never mind ‘hen.’ It’s over, we’ve got the credits. Let’s go get us a drink.”
“That sounds—oh, fur-molting damnation!”
“What—”
“I left a tool on the Ateil ship.”
“Get another one.”
“No, no, this one is to my hand and species perfect. Have to go back.”
“Want me to go with you?”
And risk you, they getting to war? I so think not. “Not needed, thanks. Back shortly meeting in bar?”
No need to name it: there was only one bar that the mechs frequented. “Yeah.”
Ferret scurried back to the Ateil ship: sooner mere, sooner back.
Keeping calm, yes? she warned herself, and said to the Ateil, Purple Ateil, who met her, “Your pardon for this, but haste to finish for you made me leave tool on board. Retrieval allowed, please?”
To her relief, no one stopped her, or said anything outrageously infuriating. She ignored the murmurs. The tool was lying exactly where she’d left it on the floor, and mat in itself was a touch insulting: they hadn’t even wanted to touch something not Ateil But Ferret refused to let herself react, merely scooped it up and said, “Thanking am. No longer needing to bother you.”