There’s always somebody who feels like they have the right to judge.
But there was also a selection of other ox-type systers, including some small furry ones, some caterpillar-like ones, a couple of examples of a photosynthetic species that were particularly welcome on stations because they respirated using carbon dioxide, and one member of an elephantine, red-skinned species whose name was unpronounceable to Terrans. We called them Thunderbys, and this one’s hulking frame strained the capacity of the corridor.
Like most other people, I edged to one side to let it past, stepping into the embrasure of an eatery doorway. The proprietor, a human like me, gave me the veil eye when they realized I wasn’t coming in, but stopped short of actually shoving me back out into the Thunderby’s path, thus saving both of us embarrassment and me possible injury. The Thunderby was huddling already, trying to take up as little space as possible, which still amounted to all of it. Its manipulator appendages consisted of five tentacular appurtenances, which it had wrapped around its torso in an uncomfortable-looking show of courtesy so as to minimize its profile.
Politeness counts the effort, or so one of my clademothers used to say.
I frowned at it thoughtfully, but though the Thunderby was big enough to have been the species mainly crewing the factory ship, it was the wrong outline. I was pretty sure we were looking for something more or less bipedal and bilaterally symmetrical.
Maybe Singer would get something useful out of the station database. That wasn’t my job this trip, anyway.
One side of the corridor rose in a ramp to the next level, and—following color-coded signs for Station Admin—I rose with it, feeling the pull of rotational “gravity” ease as I ascended toward the station’s hub. That came with a new and peculiar sensation: a sort of stretching along the fibers of my skin. My integument—and the Koregoi senso—was reacting to the change in angular and rotational momentum as I rose. I could feel the station spinning, and the fine gradation in speed between my head and my feet. Normally, that would be too subtle to notice. I steadied myself against the wall until the sensation evened out.
I thought of mentioning it to Connla, but Singer was monitoring my senso, and the fact that Connla had turned our immediate link off made me think he’d probably found his chess club and didn’t care to be bothered.
I hoped he didn’t run into any pirates while he was there. But honestly, it wasn’t any riskier than huddling in the ship would have been. The pirates knew what our ship looked like. They had no idea who we were.
The ramp merged me onto another busy corridor. This one was lined with nearly anonymous offices, some with transparent windows, rather than with shops and eateries.
I applied my ID card and most scannable appendage to the sensor beside the door marked Stationmaster in thirty-seven languages and Standard Galactic Iconography Set Number 3. The Core had already updated to Set Number 8 by then, to give you an idea of how behind the times this backwater was.
The door slid aside and I found myself in a little suite, uncomfortably warm and humid by human standards, lit with full-spectrum bulbs. Probably past what my species would consider full spectrum, honestly; my skin tingled with UV.
Other than the temperature and water content of the air, the door debouched into a pleasant-enough little reception/waiting area with a series of padded tuffets for seating, those being the sort of things that almost any species that liked to sit could sit or rest upon without discomfort. I was the only sentient visibly present. I took a blue tuffet beside the half-wall, and waited.
No more than a few minutes later, someone poked their head around the edge of the divider, and my suspicions were confirmed. The being wearing the stationmaster ID flash on their upper torso was bipedal, roughly humanoid in outline, but their integument was, from the front, an almost lusterless, smooth purple-black resembling rubber. They had a head, with four pretty normal eyes—by Terran standards—ranged around it, but the head was otherwise a fairly featureless egg. There were respiration slits between each of the eyes, and on the back of the body was a series of pollen-yellow bladders that lay flat in ranks on either side of the spine.
They were a Ceeharen, a member of a symbiotic, photosynthetic syster species I’d noticed represented in the corridor. They made a pleasant susurrant moaning—which issued from the bladders along their cellulose spine, not from their respiration apparatus—and exhaled a welcoming cloud of oxygen into the room.
Come in, my senso translated their speech. Be welcome. I am designated as [Colonel] [Habren] for these purposes. How may such a one as this assist such a one as you?
I was glad the stationmaster wasn’t human. It limited the chance that they would find the makeup hiding the silver stuff all over my hands and face weird or suspicious. On the other hand, most interspecies advantages flow two ways. I didn’t have a damned idea what they were thinking, either.
I followed Habren in, was seated on one of the ubiquitous tuffets, introduced myself by name and—by his registry number—as Singer’s engineer, and said, “I wanted to thank you personally for the braking assist.”
Of course, Habren said. For humanitarian reasons if nothing else.
They paused.
There is the little matter of justifying your crew continuing to hold right of use to the salvage tug, as it seems the recent cost of your missions has dramatically exceeded their usefulness, and the tug appears damaged. Also there is the little matter of your shipmind’s selective service option having been called in… .
“These things are true,” I told them. I steepled my fingers in my lap. “We have some nonmaterial salvage from this past trip that is significantly better than a prize vessel, however. I’d like to speak to the station Goodlaw about it. Do you have a border control vessel in port currently? Or within hailing distance?”
We have a Goodlaw on the station, Habren said. They stretched under the full-spectrum light that bathed their desk. My butt was leaving a pair of hemispherical sweat stains on my tuffet, encouraged by the warmth and humidity, but my lungs and skin were basking in it. Something about that pose, straining—unconsciously?—toward the light, and their lack of access to a Justice vessel that would be more useful to an outpost like this than the constable they did have, made me think the Ceeharen was a little bitter about being exiled out here at the back of beyond. It was administering the kind of station that would never be anything but countless troubles, small and big, without the resources allocated to manage it properly. There was probably nothing the stationmaster could do to stop Freeporters from calling through here, even if they wanted to.
So was it safe telling them what we’d found? Would they pass our identity and registry on to the captain of that Republic ship docked out there, willingly or under duress?
“I would like to speak with the station Goodlaw,” I said. “We have information of significant value regarding piracy and other illegal acts. I think it should more than redeem our debt to society.”
I see, said Habren.
“I also need some information about a syster species.”
Well, that should be possible, if we have it in the databases. Which syster would that be?
“Ah,” I said. “You see. That’s the problem.”
They waited patiently, blinking the eyes in sequence around their head.
“I don’t know which syster it was. I know some details of their physiology.”