Thus tying them to the station.
"No deal until I see the armory."
Big Bill smiled that smile he'd learned from the Krai. "Seems like you've already attempted to take a look at it. My station, Gunnery Sergeant," he added, more teeth coming into view as his smile broadened. "I know everything that happens on it. I assume you had a good reason to be down by the old ore docks?"
"We did."
He waited and, when Torin didn't expand on her answer, finally snarled, "Let's hear it, then, and I'll decide how good it is."
"We heard rumors that the Heart of Stone had come in with a big haul and wasn't sharing. No one mentioned the word armory, but we thought we might convince the captain to share. For a small finder's fee."
"Running percentages." He nodded. "I do like you, Gunnery Sergeant Kerr, but only I run percentages on this station. Understand?"
Torin had seen warmer expressions on corpses. "Perfectly, sir."
The "sir" pulled out a real smile. Torin had known it would; it was the most manipulative word in a NCO's arsenal. "Right, then. Let's go take a look at the armory, and you can tell me what we have." Pulling a pile of paper toward him, Big Bill added, "Wait for me in the outer office." An order given to establish the chain of command. "There's no need for your people to hang about; send them back to the ship. Do not mention the armory. You can fill them in when we have all the details worked out."
The vid Presit had shot on the prison planet filled all screens when Torin went back into the outer office. Each screen showed a different feed, a different point in the recording. She could see herself, Mashona, Presit, the plastic alien, and, given the HE suit, Craig's knees. Two screens had subtitles in languages Torin didn't recognize.
The Grr brothers sat staring at the screens, ignoring the other people in the room.
Appearing to ignore the other people in the room.
Keeping the two Krai in her peripheral vision, Torin beckoned Werst, Ressk, and Mashona in close, a hand signal moving Mashona far enough to the left to block the pertinent details of their interaction from Big Bill's muscle. "We've been offered a job. Training the free merchants to fight."
Werst recovered first. "With what?" he snorted.
"I'm about to find out." Hands on her hips, Torin stretched out her index finger and wrote armory on the screen of her slate. Ressk's eyes widened slightly and she stroked the word away. "Go back to the ship, I'll fill you in when I know what's going on." Wrote locked. "If you stop in the Hub for a drink, don't mention the job offer where you could be overheard. There's no guarantee we're taking it." Stroked the word away.
"Haven't had any better offers," Mashona muttered.
"Granted, but we're not going in blind."
Werst's nose ridges were nearly shut. "What's the payment?"
"For now? We get to breathe and eat."
"Activities I'm fond of," he admitted. "However…"
"Still here?" Big Bill asked, stepping out of his office.
Torin shifted slightly, just enough to put herself directly in Big Bill's line of sight. "They were just leaving."
"Gunny?" Werst didn't quite growl the word.
"Don't worry. Standing next to Big Bill is the safest place on the station."
"It's true." He brushed a bit of nonexistent dust off his shoulder. "Everyone loves me."
Ressk gave him a look that suggested he was wondering how the large man would taste with a nice red sauce. Given Big Bill's amused expression, Torin suspected he'd been looked at that way before.
"You're wasting… Big Bill's time," Torin pointed out. The pause had been small enough it could be explained by any number of reasons. If Big Bill asked, she'd think of one. He didn't ask. They were wasting her time. Craig's time. Big Bill could shove his time up his ass for all she cared. "Go."
They still recognized an order when they heard one.
When they heard the hatch close at the end of the corridor, the Grr brothers snapped off the screens and stood.
Big Bill shook his head. "If anything comes up, the gunny'll take care of it. Right?"
Torin shrugged. "Your first one's free."
"I do like you."
The Grr on the left made a noise Torin nearly echoed.
The Grr on the right rolled his eyes and dropped back onto the sofa, grabbing for the remote.
As she stepped out into the corridor, Torin heard the sound come up on one of the screens and Presit say, "You are having aliens and he are having aliens in your heads-being lovers who are being reunited and who are discovering way to be saving the day. Very romantic."
And Big Bill said, "Whatever happened to that lover you were reunited with?"
"We had aliens in our heads," Torin growled, stepping through the hatch.
When he laughed, Torin resisted the urge to turn and slam him in the throat, crushing his windpipe. But only just.
No one approached them when they crossed the Hub although everyone tracked their progress, voices rising and falling as they passed in a wave of sound that had become familiar to Torin over the last few years.
"Feel free to use your implant," Big Bill told her as they started toward the ore docks, his voice pitched intimately even though there was no one around to overhear. "Many of the free merchants do, although, given that free merchants are strongly individualistic, very few of them have tied into the station. In the interest of security, I've had to have the station's sysop capture and record all signals, even those using ship's computers as SPs."
Torin moved her tongue away from the contact points. None of her crew had implants-the Corps installed them in sergeants and above-but Craig did and Craig was alive on the station. Walking half a stride ahead of Big Bill in an empty corridor, it had seemed like a good time to let Craig know she was there. Just a ping. A moment's contact. And now her codes and Craig's had been captured by the station. They wouldn't know who he was, not yet, but the moment they did, they could connect him to her, and that could be fatal.
"Over the years I've noticed a specific muscle twitch, just here…" Big Bill touched his own face, not hers. Good thing. She didn't have a Krai's jaw strength, but she'd have made a damned good attempt to bite his finger off. "… when an implant is in use."
The bastard didn't miss much.
"Of course, when you agree to work for me, I'll need your codes." Nadayki slapped his palm against the locker, his hair standing out around his head in a lime-green aurora. "The last eight digits are a fukking date!"
It hurt to laugh; the vibrations felt like glass ground into the stump of his toe. Craig didn't let that stop him. All his delaying had been completely fukking pointless.
Patterns could be sussed out and, once found, broken, but finding a random date without hooking up a slate, with no way to tell if the first seven numbers were correct until the last number was in-time to pack a lunch. Not all CSOs added that extra layer of protection, but it wasn't uncommon. Birthdays. Anniversaries. He'd changed his to the day he'd walked late into the briefing room on the Berganitan and first saw Torin staring down at him like he'd just crawled out of a H'san's ass. Those who knew him had a chance of figuring it out. A stranger? No fukking way.
It was the digital version of a steel bar across the door.
"You're a salvage operator, this is a salvage operator's seal. Did you know them?"
Craig actually had his mouth open to answer when he realized Nadayki didn't know that Jan and Sirin had been friends. No one knew. Up until now the crew of the Heart had gone by the old truism that space was big and hadn't asked. "Sure I did, kid. You know di'Akusi Sirin? You're di'Taykan, they're di'…"
"Fuk you. And if you think the captain'll stop at a toe, you're wrong. If he thinks you're screwing him over, he'll have Doc take out organs. And sell them."