The group began breaking up, and Mannix sought out Peters. “You need moral support?” the First Class asked, briefly for him. “Tollison and I can just about order beer, as you so colorfully put it before, but if you’d like backup we’re available.” He grinned. “Among other things, I’d like to see the bridge myself.”
Peters considered that. “I do appreciate the offer,” he said after a pause, “but I reckon I need to do this on my ownsome. We can probably arrange tours later, if the folks up there ain’t too stirred up.”
“Very well, you can keep your secrets a little longer,” Mannix said, his grin taking some of the sting out. “Tollison, it would seem we’re not needed or appreciated. Shall we go attend the Master Chief’s little soiree?”
“Best thing anyway,” the big sailor opined shortly.
“Beyond a doubt. Come along then.” The mismatched pair headed for the door, Peters regarding them with a sour expression, Todd looking on with a knowing grin.
“You comin’ along?” Peters asked. His tone said he knew the answer to that.
Todd spread his hands and confirmed it. “I’d have nothing to add,” he said with a shrug.
“Yeah.” Peters regarded the younger sailor for a moment, then sighed. “Well, nothin’ for it. I reckon I oughta shower and shave first, though.”
Dhuvenig looked up as he entered. “I’ve been expecting you,” he said with a smile. “We’ve had a little excitement. You probably have questions.”
“Many questions,” Peters nodded. “Would you mind telling me what happened? My people are very curious.”
Dhuvenig smiled more broadly. “Yes, I suppose they would be. We have a few questions of our own, so I may not be able to tell you everything you’d like.”
Peters nodded. “I understand.”
Dhuvenig nodded. “Yes. What would you like to know?”
“My first question is one that doesn’t seem to have occurred to my associates: are you satisfied with the actions of the ship operators? They detected an attack and responded in the way they, and we, have been trained, but we don’t know much about the situation in general.”
“Oh, yes, we’re very pleased with what they did,” the officer responded seriously. “We have this kind of trouble occasionally, and usually we have no way to make an effective response. Your ship operators have saved the traders a great deal of money.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Usually when an attack like that happens we try to run away. If we can’t do that, the attackers will come aboard and take things. Trade goods, money, sometimes they carry people off. Very often they want to take zifthkakik.”
“Pirates,” Peters summarized, then responded to the lifted eyebrow: “We, too, have a special word for that particular category of attacker,” he explained. “Who were this group of pirates? What species? Are they of the kree?”
The responding smile was a bit grim. “I don’t actually know, but I suspect it was a group of Grallt. The weapons and tactics seemed familiar.”
Peters considered that. “I suppose I should have expected something like that,” he admitted. “We humans have pirates. Why shouldn’t you?”
“Yes, all of the species of the kree have one or more types of criminals.” Dhuvenig grinned. “Not everyone disapproves. When I was small I wanted to be a pirate.”
“Yes, I’ve been reading some of those books.” Peters shook his head. “Another thing we have in common,” he remarked. “Violent ways of asserting status can be attractive to the young, especially males.”
“Yes.” Dhuvenig grinned. “Of course that doesn’t explain why Heelinig finds the books so enjoyable.”
Peters grinned back. “You say you aren’t certain,” he pointed out. “Has no attempt been made to recover the broken ships? I would think they would have some value.”
Dhuvenig nodded. “They would have considerable value. The zifthkakik are almost certainly recoverable, and that is the greatest part of the value of any ship. Unfortunately we have no way to recover the wreckage. The ships are moving very fast, and unless the zifthkakik are active we have no way of tracking them.”
How’s that for a revelation, now? “You have no way of detecting a ship other than the response of its zifthkakik?”
“None.” The Grallt looked at him sharply. “Your tone of voice tells me that you do have such a means.”
“Yes. Radar.” When Dhuvenig looked blank, Peters went on, “Our ships are equipped with a means of emitting radio waves and detecting the reflections. We can determine where something is by examining the timing and direction of the reflected energy.”
“Remarkable.” Dhuvenig thought for a moment. “You used words in your own language. Is this radar related to your communicators?”
“Yes, a variant of the basic system.”
“Remarkable,” the Grallt said again. He steepled his hands in thought. “Do you suppose your ship operators would be willing to search for the damaged ships?”
“I don’t know. Could they gain some advantage by doing so?”
Dhuvenig’s eyebrows went up. “You haven’t been paying attention,” he chided. “Zifthkakik are extremely valuable. If any are recovered your pilots would certainly get a share. Aren’t your people anxious to acquire zifthkakik? Almost everyone else is.”
“That’s a new thought for me,” Peters admitted. “Yes, my people would certainly want to acquire zifthkakik… I do see one problem.”
“Oh?”
“Our ships have no equipment for handling external objects, and it is difficult for the operators to get in and out of them without assistance. They might be able to find the broken ships, but they wouldn’t be able to do anything about them.”
Dhuvenig shrugged. “The freight carriers have external handling equipment of a sort, and it’s easy enough to carry people in airsuits along. We don’t need to recover the ships; they’re probably not useful enough to be worth repairing. All we’re interested in is the zifthkakik.”
“Yes.” Peters was staring into space, thinking. He brought his eyes down to meet the other’s. “I will pass this proposal along. As I have told you, I am too junior to make commitments—”
“Yes, yes, I know all that,” Dhuvenig said impatiently. “Pass the proposal along, as you say. I will be waiting for the response.”
“Yes, Dhuvenig.” Peters grinned. “I can say with some confidence that they will at least find the proposal somewhat intriguing.” The Grallt grinned back, with a little twist of irony, and nodded.
Then they both laughed.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Salvage One, let’s head zero four zero mark two two zenith,” Lt(jg) Briggs suggested over the earbug. “Speed off scale as usual.”
“Roger, 210,” Peters told her. “I’ll pass the word.”
Communications were truly a jury rig. The antique UHF sets on the planes had near-infinite range under these conditions, the Grallt ships had no communications facilities at all, and the earbugs had a range measured in tens of meters away from their network repeaters. Well, he and Todd had told them. It wasn’t their fault nobody’d believed it.
“Right three points and a half, up two points,” he told the pilot. He was getting pretty good at converting degrees to the system the Grallt used. It helped that the latter was near-identical to the old system of “compass points”. It also helped that the conversion didn’t have to be exact, since the freight ship didn’t have any accurate means of measuring heading deviations either.
“Yes,” the pilot responded with a nod, and began carefully rotating the freight hauler to the new heading. When she thought it was right she nodded again and pushed the andli forward. The Hornet lagged a bit, then caught up with no problems.