She quickly settled on Malpert Station, a small mining facility within the innermost asteroid belt. 61 Cygni possessed two such belts, and the Wallfish was currently between them. The station had several things to recommend it: the company had a rep posted there, and the UMC had several ships guarding the facilities, including a cruiser, the UMCS Darmstadt.
Kira thought she might be able to play the company off the UMC and convince one or both of them to get her onto a Jelly ship. Besides, it seemed that a UMC commander who was actively engaged in fighting the aliens might appreciate the value of what she had to offer more than an official stuck behind a desk back at Ruslan or Vyyborg Station.
Either way, it was her best bet.
Thoughts of the risk she was running gave her pause. What she was doing could backfire in all sorts of horrible ways. Then she squared her shoulders. Doesn’t matter. It would take a lot more than an attack of nerves to make her give up.
A flag appeared in the corner of her overlays, alerting her to a newly arrived message:
Why are you shedding dust, O Multifarious Meatbag? Your excrescence is clogging my filters. – Gregorovich
Kira allowed herself a grim smile. So she wouldn’t have been able to keep the Soft Blade a secret in any case. Subvocalizing her answer, she wrote:
Now, now. You can’t expect me to give up the answer that easily.
I need to speak with the captain as soon as possible. In private. It’s a matter of life and death. – Kira
A reply appeared a second later:
Your hubris intrigues me, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. – Gregorovich
She frowned. Was that a yes or a no?
Kira didn’t have to wait long to find out. Not five minutes later, the short, blond-haired woman she’d seen in the other cargo hold appeared in the doorway. The woman was wearing an olive jacket with the sleeves cut off to reveal arms that rippled with the sort of muscle that only came from gene-hacking or many years of lifting weights and controlling your diet. Despite that, her face was sharp and dainty, feminine even. Slung over her shoulder was an ugly-looking slug thrower.
The woman put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. “Oi! Kaminski! Get over here. Captain wants to see you.”
Kira got to her feet and, with everyone’s eyes on her, made her way to the doorway. The woman gave her a once-over and then jerked her chin toward the hallway outside. “You first, Kaminski.”
The moment the pressure door closed behind them, the woman said, “Keep your hands where I can see them.”
Kira did just that as they climbed up the central shaft. With her contact lenses, the ship’s public overlays were now visible: colorful projections affixed to the doors and walls and lights and even sometimes points in the air itself. They transformed the Wallfish’s dingy interior into a gleaming, modernesque construction.
There were other options as well; she cycled through them, watching as the shaft flashed between a castle-like appearance; a wooded, Art Nouveau layout; alien vistas (some warm and inviting, some laden with storms and lit with occasional flashes of lightning); and even an abstract, fractal-derived nightmare that reminded her an uncomfortable amount of the Soft Blade.
She suspected the last one was Gregorovich’s favorite.
In the end, Kira settled on the initial overlay. It was the least confusing while also being upbeat and relatively cheery.
“You have a name?” she asked.
“Yeah. It’s Shut-the-Hell-Up-and-Keep-Moving.”
When they arrived at the deck that held sickbay, the woman poked her in the back and said, “Here.”
Kira got off the ladder and pushed her way through the pressure door into the corridor beyond. She stopped, then, as she saw the overlay on the wall, the same one Trig had told her to ignore the previous day.
The image covered a good two meters of paneling. In it, a battalion of jackrabbits garbed in power armor charged toward a similarly equipped force (also jackrabbits) upon a battle-ravaged field. Leading the near force was … the pig Runcible, now graced with a pair of boar tusks. And fronting the opposition was none other than the ship cat, Mr. Fuzzypants, wielding a flamethrower in each furry paw.
“What in Thule’s name is that?” said Kira.
The sharp-faced woman had the grace to look embarrassed. “We lost a bar bet with the crew of the Ichorous Sun.”
“It … could have been worse,” said Kira. For a bar bet, they’d gotten off light.
The woman nodded. “If we had won, the captain was going to make them paint—Actually, you don’t want to know.”
Kira was inclined to agree.
A nudge from the barrel of the slug thrower was enough to start Kira down the corridor again. She wondered if she ought to have her hands above her head.
Their walk ended at another pressure door on the other side of the ship. The woman banged on the wheel in the center, and a moment later, Falconi’s voice sounded: “It’s unlocked.”
The wheel produced a satisfying clunk as she turned it.
The door swung open, and Kira was surprised to see they weren’t meeting in a control center, but rather a cabin. Falconi’s cabin, to be precise.
The room was just large enough to walk a few steps without banging into the furniture. Bunk, sink, lockers, and walls were all as plain as could be, even with overlays. The only decoration sat on the built-in desk: a gnarled bonsai tree with silvery-grey leaves and a trunk twisted in the shape of an S.
Despite herself, Kira was impressed. Bonsai were hard to keep alive on a ship, yet the tree seemed healthy and well cared for.
The captain was sitting at the desk, a half-dozen windows arrayed in his holo-display.
The top few buttons of his shirt were undone to reveal a wedge of tanned muscle, but it was his rolled-up sleeves and bare forearms that caught her attention. The exposed skin was a twisted mass of mottled scar tissue. It looked like partially melted plastic, hard and shiny.
Kira’s first reaction was revulsion. Why? Burns, and scars in general, were easy to treat. Even if Falconi had been injured somewhere without medical facilities, why wouldn’t he have had the scars removed later? Why would he allow himself to be … deformed?
Lying on Falconi’s lap was Runcible. The pig’s eyes were half-closed, and his tail wiggled with satisfaction as the captain scratched behind his ears.
Nielsen stood next to the captain, arms crossed and an expression of impatience on her face.
“You wanted to see me?” Falconi said. He smirked, seeming to enjoy Kira’s discomfort.
She reassessed her initial impression of him. If he was willing to use his scars to put her off balance, then he was smarter, more dangerous than she had thought. And if the bonsai was anything to go by, more cultured too, even if he was an exploitive asshole.
“I need to speak with you in private,” she said.
Falconi gestured at Nielsen and the blond-haired woman. “Whatever you have to say, you can say in front of them.”
Irritated, Kira said, “This is serious … Captain. I wasn’t joking when I told Gregorovich it was a matter of life and death.”
The mocking smile never left Falconi’s lips but his eyes hardened into spikes of blue ice. “I believe you, Ms. Kaminski. However, if you think I’m going to meet with you all on my own, with no witnesses, you must think I was a born idiot. They stay. That’s final.”