She felt eyes on her. When she glanced up, the young Thelerie, Sunset, was turning his head quickly back to his control board. Mirina had seen sympathy on his face. She walked over and patted him on the wing joint.
"You've got a kind heart, youngster," she said quietly. "And you do good work. Keep it up."
He looked up at her, his huge eyes glowing with worship. "Thank you, Mirina."
"Which way's your homeworld?" she asked.
Sunset put up a wing-finger at once, directed aft and to starboard, tracking Thelerie upward as the ship he rode in transited an orbit around the planetoid. His natural gift was a comfort to her, something constant to hold onto in their chancy travels. She wished she could do that: point to her home, no matter how distant it was. She wished she had a home to point to. The ship on which she had been born was scrapped and recycled before she started primary education. Sunset looked at her with a soft, mournful expression, and Mirina realized she'd let her feelings show on her face. She slapped the Thelerie on the shoulder in unconscious imitation of Bisman.
"Thanks, youngster," she said, then nodded to Zonzalo when he signalled her that the communication link was open.
"Greetings, leader!" she said, pulling a bright face for the screentank. "Will you be glad we visited you today!"
Aldon Bisman kicked the ground and spat. Muddy yellow-brown pebbles scattered against the crates of unimaginably precious air-recirculation valves. Mirina was annoyed, but she contained herself.
"What do you mean, seven thousand apiece?" Bisman said to Mirchu Fontrose, a thin, short, sallow-faced man. "What's this character think he's playing at?"
"All we can afford, Aldon, my old friend," Fontrose said, mournfully. "Unless you'd consider extending us further credit. You know we're good for it."
Mirina folded her arms and watched her partner's face. She was tempted to tell the colony leader to fold his offer into a point of singularity and put it in his eye, but this was Bisman's home, and his show.
"Crap," Bisman said, levelly. "They're worth ten. I know that if I sell them to you at seven, you'll be out of orbit the second we're gone. You'll take them to the bazaar on Phait and sell them yourself for that. I could have done that myself, and you'd be stuck paying eleven or worse to the traders. Ten."
Fontrose and the colonists on Coltera were prone to what Mirina's mother called "poor-mouthing." Even though their gem-mining brought in a good credit, they always made believe they were on the edge of starvation. Nothing could have been a greater lie. Opals, especially ones of the clarity and depth of color that they coaxed out of that impossibly dense matrix, were always in demand, however illicit the market. Coltera wasn't an official CW colony. The independent miners who discovered the strike had checked ownership of this small and marginal world. They hid the signs of success and squatted, staking a homesteading claim through the housing office, as if only one family lived here, registered as subsistence wheat farmers. Ridiculous, Mirina thought, since there was no soil. In the meantime, the opals began to appear on the gray market, traded for fabulous profits that were split up among the whole of the colony. The irony of it all was that the family registered with CenCom government received a subsidy for earning below the poverty level.
A lot of independent thinkers had elected to "disappear" and end up here, falling off the CW tax records much as she and the raiders had. When one didn't pay tax, one had money for a lot of things. Like pressure units.
She glanced around the cul-de-sac at the raised mound that surrounded them on each side. Behind every one of those doorways was a domicile, half a mansion in size. Their mining equipment, state of the art for extracting delicate opal, was so new the enamel wasn't scratched. Mirina caught a glimpse of their shabby, red ship standing among the rock loaders, and was sufficiently irritated into speaking.
"The price goes up while you stall," she said, tapping her foot, deliberately sounding unreasonable. "When it goes up to twelve, we leave."
Fontrose cringed away from her. "All right, all right. Don't rush me. Don't rush me. That's a lot of money, you know. I suppose you came by it honestly, eh?" He peered from one face to another. Bisman quirked one side of his mouth.
"Salvage," he said simply, flipping a hand up toward space. "Found it out there, somewhere. You know." Fontrose raised his hands in surrender.
"All right, all right, I won't ask."
"Eleven," Mirina said warningly.
"Wait! Wait!" Fontrose turned to her, alarmed. "Please, dear lady, don't raise things until we've had a chance to talk about your first offer. Now, I thought eight and a half…"
A long-legged figure stumbled down the steps of the raiders' ship and ran toward them headlong. Mirina recognized Zonzalo, and wondered why he was so agitated. She stopped him with a fierce glance when he was still half a dozen meters from the group. He gestured with his hands and eyebrows, trying to signal urgency. He stopped waving at her when Fontrose turned to glance at him, but started his semaphoring again as soon as he looked away. Bisman shot her a look of annoyance.
"Go back, Zon," she said at last. "Check and see how they're coming with those containers."
"Miri!" came a choked squawk from Zonzalo. Fontrose swiveled to stare openly. Bisman looked exasperated. Mirina smiled at Fontrose, dangerously, but politely.
"Excuse me just one moment. A matter of crew discipline."
The colony leader nodded, and Bisman took the distraction as an opportunity to move in to close the sale.
"Now, while she's gone, my old friend, let's get the price to where we both like it."
"What is it?" Mirina hissed. Her younger brother was hopping up and down with nerves. "How dare you interrupt a negotiation?"
"It's dire! Twilight's been holding a message for us from Autumn on Base Eight. They've been attacked by a Central Worlds ship. They need help."
"What are we supposed to do about it?" Mirina asked, annoyed. "We're too bloody far away to do anything now. That message will be weeks old!"
"We ought to go and check out Autumn's report," the boy insisted.
"Check out what? If Autumn got word out, then someone was alive to operate the communications board."
"What the hell is going on?" Bisman asked, coming up between them.
"Base Eight's had a run-in with CW ships," Zonzalo said, wide-eyed.
"So what?"
"So, it's been discovered by the authorities," the boy said. "We have to help them."
"Zon, this is not a vid-show. We're ages away from there. Autumn will just have to abandon the place," Mirina said. "She's a survivor. She'll get the rest of the crews out of there."
"Too bad about Base Eight," Bisman said, scratching his unshaven chin. "It lasted a long time. My dad established that one when I was a boy. I spent time there myself."
"But CW might find the Slime," Zonzalo said. "They'll talk."
"Who cares? They don't know who we are," Bisman said, impatient to get back to the negotiations. "Besides, they stopped kicking a long time ago. One ship is no big deal. They'll come, they'll go. In the meantime, we can go back and mine the skies around Planet Two with impact grenades, to make sure no one gets offworld, no matter how many visitors they get from CenCom." His eyes grew dreamy. "Maybe a blanket bombardment, keep kicking them until the whole planet blows up. Always wanted to see how much that Slime Ball defense system could take."
"Stop it, damn you," Mirina said, interrupting. She never knew whether his enfant terrible mode was an act or not. "We'll just abandon the base. The Slime don't know where we are or where we went. Zon, send word to Phyllis and Autumn and the others to destroy the equipment, and evacuate. There's no need to cause further loss of life."