Bisman turned on her, one finger thrust upward under her chin, eyes flashing dangerously. "Enough of that, brawn. I'm tired of it. You lost one friend, one brain. I've seen hundreds of friends, family, even lovers die over the thirty years I've been out here. You're here where my people live. Do you want to know how many holes there are in my family?"
"I know," Mirina said, staring him straight back in the eye. "You've told me again and again."
"And I know. Charles this. Charles that." His scorn pummeled her, and she gaped at him. He shoved his face close to hers, backing her out of the negotiation circle until she was trapped between him and somebody's front door. "I don't care any more! You don't like death, huh? You don't want to see anyone else die. It blunts your edge, woman. You should be able to kill to protect yourself. Why should just one death affect you so much?"
"Because I thought he could never die," she shouted, feeling her heart constrict and squeeze the words out of her. Bisman backed away, and Mirina caught her breath. Her eyes stung and she knew she was blinking back tears. Sensing a personal matter, Fontrose had turned delicately away, but he couldn't avoid having heard her. Bisman and Zonzalo stared. Mirina glared back defiantly. She had admitted the truth to herself at last, the secret she'd been keeping locked away for eight years. She felt like screaming some more, but she kept control. Her voice stayed level and low. "Because no one ever understood how much I love being in space. How I have to be there. He felt the same way."
"Well, you couldn't sleep with him, couldn't even touch him. What the hell good was he as a partner?"
Bisman spat at the ground, and Mirina hated him. As she looked laser bolts at his back, the co-leader went back to Fontrose, who had moved away. Mirina shook her head, willing her rage to subside. You could not explain the brain/brawn relationship to someone who hadn't experienced it. No one else could understand. Bisman never had shown notable signs of sensitivity. She was a fool to expect it.
She turned to Zonzalo. He had stayed alongside them to make sure she was all right, but also a few paces away, well out of the line of verbal fire between his sister and her partner. He fidgeted anxiously, and nodded his head with a slight, hopeful smile. Mirina smiled back, but her eyes were serious.
"We abandon the Slime system, Zon. The Slime don't have a clue who's been out there on Planet Five all those years. We've never left any live captives, so they can't tell Central Worlds authority what we look like. There's not much left on the base. I regret leaving the computer system behind, but it's anonymous. No Standard files anywhere. It's all in Thelerie."
Zonzalo's mouth stretched in a slow smile. "So when CW finds it, they won't be able to read it anyway. Pretty good, Madam Don."
"I didn't do it to please you," she snapped. "I did it so the Thelerie could use it more easily in emergencies. I hope they can get out."
"Soft in the head, dammit," Bisman said, coming back. He looked pleased with himself. He brandished a plastic card in his hand: the agreement struck with Fontrose, thumbprinted and secured. "Ten. What did I tell you? We'll have to do something about that infiltrator, if it's still hanging around Base Eight space when we're back there. We'll strike hard, and strike fast. One ship shouldn't be so hard to beat, not with our advantage, the Slime Ball."
"I'm not convinced that unit will be of help for much longer," Mirina said, uneasily. It had been getting steadily weaker over the last couple of years. It needed to be fixed, and none of them had the remotest idea how it worked. Only blind chance had led his engineers to discover what it was all those years ago when they took it off the Slime ship. Only sheerest coincidence had allowed them to install the three Balls in reiver ships and gotten them to work without blowing up. Bisman relied too heavily on it, and that concerned Mirina. Their operation shouldn't turn on a single piece of equipment. She'd said so for years.
"It'll be fine. You worry too much," Bisman said, flicking the card between his fingertips.
Zonzalo tried to add a touch of optimism. "We'll probably hear an update from Autumn as we head back in that direction. Another message is probably on its way now. I'm sure they destroyed that ship. It was only one, and we have three on that base."
"Right," said Bisman, grabbing Mirina's arm and leading the way toward the ship. "In the meantime, we've got a delivery for the Thelerie. Don't you like being thought of as a goddess? Bringing aid from the heavens to bring wings to the winged?"
Mirina lay in a bunk in the guest cave and listened to the echoes far down the hall. Bisman and his old cronies had decided to make a night of it in the settlement, and dragged Zonzalo and Sunset along for fun. No matter how hard she pressed to keep the youngsters on the ship, Bisman countered her every argument. He couldn't see any good reason for sequestering them on his home planet. At least he didn't insist on taking them off on strange ports. Mirina was responsible for Zonzalo, and she felt responsible for Sunset. He was the most gormless, innocent creature she'd ever shipped with, even more so than any other Thelerie. He hadn't a guileful cell in his body, and he took everything his precious humans said as the mathematical truth. Stars knew what a less moral band of humans might have done with him.
Moral, hah!
It had been eight years since she'd shipped on with Bisman. Eight, long, damned years. When she had paired with Charles on the CM-702, she'd only kept in touch in a sporadic fashion with Zonzalo. She was sorry now. She should have been more of an influence in his upbringing, taking more of the role of their deceased parents, instead of trusting it to boarding school counselors. But brainships were on almost constant duty in Exploration. Mirina couldn't get free just to mediate a grades dispute or a behavior violation for her brother. Sometimes she didn't even hear about problems until months after they had occured. She'd failed in her parenting, and that still bothered her.
Not long after Charles died she got a message that Zonzalo had left school and fallen in with Bisman. She hadn't liked the sound of the man at all. Anyone with charm and perseverance could gain influence over her poor, silly, gullible brother, who was still looking for a strong role model to fashion himself after. In this case it could get him killed. Zonzalo hinted deliciously of danger and secret raids accomplished in a fast scout ship. Mirina knew she'd have to go and get her brother away from that crowd. He was the only family she had.
With the reputation of jinx riding her, Mirina couldn't get anyone to help her ship out to find him, nor even get a full hearing on the subject. The authorities paid little attention to a troubled woman babbling about a distant brother and malign influences. The counseling they had given her after Charles' death was inadequate, as if her emotional recovery was of secondary importance to the enormous catastrophe of the death of a brainship. It seemed that no one cared at all about her. She resented that her supervisor in Exploration hadn't intervened more closely in getting her another berth-any berth-when it would have done wonders for her sanity, not to mention her patriotism. Mirina felt that Central Worlds had let her down at every single opportunity. Refusing to untangle the red tape to help her find Zonzalo was the last crumb that upset the scale. Never mind that she thought her brother was in the hands of pirates, and CW might be able to solve robberies in that sector. The official budget wasn't set up to handle "free-lance" missions, her boss had said. Then he'd mined her file with false complaints of insubordination, so when she went over his head for help, no one would listen to her. She left, cursing Central Worlds and all bureaucracy. Now and forever more, she was on her own.