She paused with a slight frown when she realized that she had unconsciously altered her stride to suit the march tempo. She stopped, and her pause was the length of a measure. She laughed when she realized it. "Does this mean I get to be queen today?"
"Actually, after your restless night, I decided something upbeat would suit."
"Well, I sure got off on the right foot, then," she said with a sound approximating a giggle.
Simeon was pleased. Last night their relationship really had turned a corner. They were going to be all right.
"So, a good morning to you, Simeon," she said with an impish smile.
"And a good morning right back atcha, as Patsy Sue would say."
Channa's appreciative smile faded slowly into a frown. "I'd consider it a real good morning if I could see and speak to Joat as soon as possible. I'm very worried that she might jump ship on us, and that would ruin every step of progress we've made with her."
"Wish I could oblige you on that, Channa, but I don't know where she is now. She turned on her sound-scrubber early this morning and effectively vanished." He hurried on when Channa's face showed her disappointment clearly. "I don't think she'd leave on two counts. One, she knows her way intimately between the skins of this station, and it's certainly big enough for her to change hidey-holes on an hourly basis if necessary. And two, none of the ships undocking today are the type she could stow away on or hire out on. I've got every sensor tuned to her registered patterns, and I've discreetly alerted key personnel."
Channa nodded and went to her console, pulling the notescreen towards her. "Then we had better get to work. SPRIM ought to be moving on that dispatch you sent off last night." Her anxiety lifted at Simeon's knowing chuckle. She ran her fingers in a tattoo on the console. "And I suspect Child Welfare won't like being on their hit list."
"Hit list?" Simeon spoke with some alarm. "Are they that way inclined?" He didn't wish Ms. Dorgan any physical harm.
"The way SPRIM execs rave about humanocentric chauvinism is enough to turn even a tolerant person into a xenophobe. They've got money and they're tireless in ensuring protection. That slur she made on shellpeople, well… And the MM make SPRIM look like a quilting party."
"Quilting party?" Simeon searched his lexicon for the term.
"Old-fashioned way to spend a productive and socializing evening," she explained absently.
"Oh. Not much we can do until they get back to us, I suppose."
Simeon sounded unhappy. Channa quirked a corner of her mouth.
"We can't go in with lasers blazing and slag Child Welfare Central, if that's what you mean. If the station had full self-government, they wouldn't be able to mess with us-so let's concentrate on station business for now, shall we?" She cleared her throat. "I've been going over your accounts, Simeon, and I've got to say that you have some weird entries. For example, tucked away in the fourth quarter is the notation 'stuff.' You'll have to be more specific than 'stuff.' "
"Why? 'Stuff' is acceptable to the accountants," he said in a facetious tone.
"I'm not an accountant. I'm supposed to be your partner. Would you explain 'stuff'?"
"It's like this, Channa, I buy things that interest me. Me, Simeon, not the station master brain." Never mind that that also accounted for why he hadn't paid off his natal debt to Central Worlds. So I'm a pack rat. Is that her business now?
Far out in space, Simeon's peripheral monitors, the ring of sensors that warned of incoming traffic, began to transmit information that suggested a very large object was headed their way. From the ripples it caused in subspace, it was very large or very fast or both. He split his attention between her and the alert, and sent a communicator pulse in the direction of the disturbance. There were strict rules on how to approach a station. Approaching unheralded broke half a dozen regs and invariably caused stiff credit penalties.
Respond to hailing, he transmitted. Respond immediately.
"Well, we've got this inspection and audit coming up in two weeks," he heard Channa saying in a firm let's-not-beat-about-the-bush tone. "We have got to have everything shipshape and Bristol fashion, partner."
He did appreciate that she subtly reminded him of her promise to help with Joat, but this was no time for petty details.
"I don't have a ship shape, Channa," he muttered in his distraction, "but I do have something very unusual out there, approaching me without due protocol."
Visual information was now reaching him. Dropping out of interstellar transit and approaching at… Great Ghu,.17 c! A large vessel whose profile did not fit any known human ship. The basic hull-form was spherical, but carried a web of crazy-quilt additions, constructions of girder and latticework. Some of them looked as if they had been slashed off short with energy beams, and the outpoints were tattered. People were generally not sloppy with cutting tools. Enemies were. Simeon relayed a standard "please identify" message and put the tug bays on standby.
"Nor am I abristle," he continued to Channa. "The inspectors will be when they come, though."
Channa groaned. "Even for you that was lame. You're being unusually ridiculous, Simeon. You know the mentality that goes with these inspections-sentence first, trial afterwards."
"In other words, off with our heads, if they could reach mine."
"And us running as fast as we can to stay in one place, too. Which capability you also don't have. Now, since this is my first time with you…"
"Oh, Channa… pant, pant."
"Simeon," she said warningly. "I know where the controls for your hormone balance are."
"Heh heh, sorry. What's the worst they can do to me? Send me back to asteroidic purgatory? Like I told you, I'm only on temporary duty here anyway."
Channa had been running a scan. "There are twelve entries for the word 'stuff'! You want this to be a temporary assignment? Well, you may get your wish."
"It's not a wish, my dear, I never said 'I wish they'd take me away from here and put me anywhere else.' I've a very definite destination in mind, as you so astutely concluded the other evening. If I had my druthers, I'd be running a command ship and waging star wars on the Axial Perimeter. But," and he gave a huge audible sigh, "who believes in wishes anymore?"
"You do, with all your war games and tactical daydreams."
The approaching ship still had not responded, nor was it dumping speed as fast as it should. In fact, whoever was in command had waited much too long to begin doing so. The flare of drive energies should be blanking out that whole quadrant, and the neutrino flux was barely enough for a pile just ticking over. Simeon came to a disagreeable conclusion.
"Whoa, there, Channa. We've got stuff, not mine, coming in to make mince of us if we're not careful. Have a look?"
Simeon slapped up a main screen view of the intruder bearing down on them. Surprise and alarm held her motionless for only a split second before she reacted.
"I'm alerting the perimeter guard," she said, wiping her previous program and inputting the new.
"Right!" Although he already had, two sources of the same alert emphasized the emergency. "I'm busy calculating how to cushion the impact of that great hulking mass whistling towards us. I hope they know where the brakes are." Nice to have a brawn to share emergency work. The station personnel should get used to dealing with her.
Stabbing the alert button on the main console, Channa then called up a finer resolution of the object, which to her appeared to be a darker mass against the black of space.
"Unannounced arrival!" She transmitted the image to the personnel on perimeter traffic control, alerting them to the pertinent vector and ordering them to begin rerouting incoming traffic.