"Gunny…"
Grateful for something to focus on, she gave Werst her full attention.
"At least some of the cark in this station will know you from Presit's vids."
"I'm counting on it. Me, and the three of you."
"Yeah." His nose ridges flared. "And they'll know Craig from that last vid."
"No, probably not. Like Presit said, he was behind the camera about ninety-five percent of the time, and when he wasn't, Presit was all but shooting up his nose. He had the beard then, and the edits…" Under the old adage of know thy enemy, she'd seen all the vids once. "… focus exclusively on the gray running out of his eyes." Sometimes she dreamed about the way the polynumerous polyhydroxide alcoholyde shape-shifting molecular fukwads had felt, slightly cooler than body temperature as they oozed out of her tear ducts. She'd wake up furious and have to leave the bunk before she took it out on Craig. Sometimes she wondered if it had felt the same to him, if he'd felt the same about it. After she got him back, she'd ask. Add it to the list of all the things they'd intended to talk about later. No more waiting for later. "Odds are good no one looked away from the emerging aliens long enough to identify him and, under personal privacy laws…" Which did not extend to members of the military under the full disclosure act. "… he was never identified by name."
"And Nat, the woman who…"
"The woman off the Heart who set us up for the ambush that took Craig," Torin growled. "I remember her."
"She saw you."
"Only for a minute, and she was paying no attention to me. Had her eyes on the game. The man who came into the bar with her, he might be a problem."
'The guy with the crazy eyes," Mashona put in.
"Yeah, him. But I'm not sure he saw me as an actual person-he threat assessed, he moved on. Who'd expect to see Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr on a half-finished OutSector station? I suspect that, as much as economic factors, was why Craig chose it. Here, at Vrijheid, who we are becomes the larger part of our reason for being here and being that obvious will act like camouflage; all they'll see is the obvious-not the people behind it and certainly not a specific person glimpsed for a few seconds in another part of space."
The three members of her assault team stared at her for a long moment. Finally, Ressk said, "Maybe you could change your hair?"
Torin closed her fingers around the plastic vertical that held the padded arm to the pilot's chair. "The only reason I'd go anywhere near that man is if he ends up between me and Craig. Otherwise, I'll avoid him. It's a good-sized station, I'm willing to play the odds."
"Make your bet, then, Gunny. Long-range sensors just picked up a station." Werst swept his palm across the board. "No details, though."
"Distance?" Mashona asked.
"If we can ping them, distance doesn't matter. Not everyone sends out a tourist brochure, but, if nothing else, we should be receiving information about docking and fees. And what's more, I'm reading ships, but their registries aren't coming up. There's no way to tell if the Heart of Stone is there."
"It's there." The Heart was there, and Craig was there. Because they had to be.
"If we can ping them…" Mashona began.
"They can ping us." Werst agreed.
"And they'll get what I want them to," Ressk said, smiling broadly. "Which is the same as what they're giving out."
"I wonder how close they'll let us get?"
They were still moving fast, riding the exit surge, maintaining their emergent speed until they knew where they were going.
"No point in talking to us until they can stop us," Werst pointed out, "and unless they've got some big fukking guns, we need to be a little closer for…"
"Hi there." The young di'Taykan male on the screen had hair so light a blue it was nearly white and his pale eyes looked paler still given the amount of black they were lined with. Makeup had turned his skin the same shade as his hair-Torin assumed it was makeup-and he had two black rings piercing the center of his lower lip. "I'm pulling sweet fuk all off your signal, so you've got three minutes to make your case before I blow you to kingdom come. Which, by the way, is not an actual place but an oldEarth term meaning up. So, three minutes before I blow you up."
Torin centered herself on the screen. "I heard Vrijheid Station was a refuge from government bullshit."
"Really." He leaned a little closer to the pickup and grinned. Torin had never see a di'Taykan with dimples. "Who'd you hear that from?"
"Krai named Firrg."
"I don't think so."
"I had my foot on her throat at the time."
"Well, that endears you to me, trin, but there's…" His hair stilled and he frowned. "Wait, do I know you?"
Torin smiled.
"Fuk me. I do know you. You're that gunnery sergeant who had the little gray aliens in your brain and then got captured and found out the little gray aliens were in the plastic and actually making us all run around like we were neivins or something. I saw the vids. You were like crazy kick ass. Seriously, fuk me."
"Little hard from way out here."
"Right." His hair flipped forward over his face, then back-like his whole expression had blinked. "Okay, there's a lock free on the delta arm. You're going to have to give control over to the docking computer if you want to come any closer. We can't risk you ramming the station."
"That happens a lot?"
"Hasn't yet. But if it did, Big Bill would fukking space me."
"How do I know I'll get control back?"
"We start randomly taking ships over and it's bad for business, isn't it? Big Bill doesn't like things being bad for business. You leave here in good standing, and you get control back about when you would be leaving any station. Your standing ends up being not so good, well, you don't leave and you don't actually care about who's flying your ship." He glanced down at his screens. "Okay, really, you have to give control over now or you're fukked. And not in a fun I think you're fukking amazing because you did that whole plastic alien thing in your underwear kind of way."
Teeth gritted, Torin sighed and surrendered control.
The Second Star shuddered as her forward jets fired to slow her approach.
"Wow, nice firewalls. I can't get squat off you." He sounded honestly impressed. "Look, when you get in, I'm pretty much guaranteeing Big Bill's going to want to talk to you, being who you are and all, so if it takes a while to get the lock open, that's why. Oh and don't forget…" He leaned closer to the screen, one hand dropping down off camera into his lap. "… seriously, trin, fuk me."
And the screen went black.
"They listening in?"
Ressk snorted. "They're trying to."
"Sounds like you've got a fan, Gunny." Mashona stretched out her legs, crossed her booted feet at the ankles, and grinned. "He's kind of cute in a slightly crazy way. What's trin mean?"
"Beats me. Must be new slang."
"Context makes it sounds like sweetheart, or babe."
"Yeah, well, he's all yours," Torin told her, keeping most of her attention on the boards. "My focus remains on Craig."
"But di'Taykan don't count. They're like drinking that watery Niln beer-you get to have the experience with none of the effects."
"And if I have to fuk my way past him to get to Craig, I'll consider it for as long as it takes me to snap his neck."
It took her a moment to realize it had gotten so quiet she could hear one of the Krai scratching through the bristles on the back of his head. She could feel their eyes on her as she turned the chair.