Meng nodded and smiled up at him.
Why do I have the feeling that I’m not remotely the most dangerous person in the room? Jedao thought. But he returned Meng’s smile, all the same. It never hurt to have allies.
AGWA PATROL ship greeted them as they neared Du Station. Haval had assured Jedao that this was standard practice and obligingly matched velocities.
Jedao listened in on Haval speaking with the Gwa authority, who spoke flawless high language. “They don’t call it ‘high language,’ of course,” Haval had explained to Jedao earlier. “They call it ‘mongrel language.’” Jedao had expressed that he didn’t care what they called it.
Haval didn’t trust Jedao to keep his mouth shut, so she’d stashed him in the business office with Teshet to keep an eye on him. Teshet had brought a wooden box that opened up to reveal an astonishing collection of jewelry. Jedao watched out of the corner of his eye as Teshet made himself comfortable in the largest chair, dumped the box’s contents on the desk, and began sorting it to criteria known only to him.
Jedao was watching videos of the command center and the communications channel, and tried to concentrate on reading the authority’s body language, made difficult by her heavy zigzag cosmetics and the layers of robes that cloaked her figure. Meanwhile, Teshet put earrings, bracelets, and mysterious hooked and jeweled items in piles, and alternated helpful glosses of Gwa-an gestures with borderline insubordinate, not to say lewd, suggestions for things he could do with Jedao. Jedao was grateful that his ability to blush, like his ability to be tickled, had been burned out of him in Academy. Note to self, suggest to General Essier that Teshet was wasted in special ops and maybe reassign him to Recreation?
Jedao mentioned this to Teshet while Haval was discussing the cargo manifest with the authority. Teshet lowered his lashes and looked sideways at Jedao. “You don’t think I’m good at my job?” he asked.
“You have an excellent record,” Jedao said.
Teshet sighed, and his face became serious. “You’re used to regular Kel, I see.”
Jedao waited.
“I end up in a lot of situations where if people get the notion that I’m a Kel officer, I may end up locked up and tortured. While that could be fun in its own right, it makes career advancement difficult.”
“You could get a medal out of it.”
“Oh, is that how you got promoted so—?”
Jedao held up his hand, and Teshet stopped. On the monitor, Haval was saying, in a greasy voice, “I’m glad to hear of your interest, madam. We would have been happy to start hauling the lubricant earlier, except we had to persuade our people that—”
The authority’s face grew even more imperturbable. “You had to figure out whom to bribe.”
“We understand there are fees—”
Jedao listened to Haval negotiating her bribe to the authority with half an ear. “Don’t tell me all that jewelry’s genuine?”
“The gems are mostly synthetics,” Teshet said. He held up a long earring with a rose quartz at the end. “No, this won’t do. I bought it for myself, but you’re too light-skinned for it to look good on you.”
“I’m wearing jewelry?”
“Unless you brought your own—scratch that, I bet everything you own is in red and gold.”
“Yes.”
Teshet tossed the rose quartz earring aside and selected a vivid emerald earstud. “This will look nice on you.”
“I don’t get a say?”
“How much do you know about merchanter fashion trends out in this march?”
Jedao conceded the point.
The private line crackled to life. “You two still in there?” said Haval’s voice.
“Yes, what’s the issue?” Teshet said.
“They’re boarding us to check for contraband. You haven’t messed with the drugs cabinet, have you?”
Teshet made an affronted sound. “You thought I was going to get Sren high?”
“I don’t make assumptions when it comes to you, Teshet. Get the hell out of there.”
Teshet thrust the emerald earstud and two bracelets at Jedao. “Put those on,” he said. “If anyone asks you where the third bracelet is, say you had to pawn it to make good on a gambling debt.”
Under other circumstances, Jedao would have found this offensive—he was good at gambling—but presumably Sren had different talents. As he put on the earring, he said, “What do I need to know about these drugs?”
Teshet was stuffing the rest of the jewelry back in the box. “Don’t look at me like that. They’re illegal both in the heptarchate and the Gwa Reality, but people run them anyway. They make useful cover. The Gwa-an search us for contraband, they find the contraband, they confiscate the contraband, we pay them a bribe to keep quiet about it, they go away happy.”
Impatient with Jedao fumbling with the clasp of the second bracelet, he fastened it for him, then turned Jedao’s hand over and studied the scar at the base of his palm. “You should have skinsealed that one too, but never mind.”
“I’m bad at peeling vegetables?” Jedao suggested. Close enough to “knife fight,” right? And much easier to explain away than bullet scars.
“Are you two done?” Haval’s voice demanded.
“We’re coming, we’re coming,” Teshet said.
Jedao took up his post in the command center. Teshet himself disappeared in the direction of the airlock. Jedao wasn’t aware that anything had gone wrong until Haval returned to the command center, flanked by two personages in bright orange space suits. Both wielded guns of a type Jedao had never seen before, which made him irrationally happy. While most of his collection was at home with his mother, he relished adding new items. Teshet was nowhere in sight.
Haval’s pilot spoke before the intruders had a chance to say anything. “Commander, what’s going on?”
The broader of the two arrivals spoke in Tlen Gwa, then kicked Haval in the shin. “Guess what,” Haval said with a macabre grin. “Those aren’t the real authorities we ran into. They’re pirates.”
Oh, for the love of fox and hound, Jedao thought. In truth, he wasn’t surprised, just resigned. He never trusted it when an operation went too smoothly.
The broader pirate spoke again. Haval sighed deeply, then said, “Hand over all weapons or they start shooting.”
Where’s Teshet? Jedao wondered. As if in answer, he heard a gunshot, then the ricochet. More gunshots. He was sure at least one of the shooters was Teshet, or one of Teshet’s operatives: they carried Stinger 40s and he recognized the whine of the reports.
Presumably Teshet was occupied, which left matters here up to him. Some of Haval’s crew went armed. Jedao did not—they had agreed that Sren wouldn’t know how to use a gun—but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. While the other crew set down their guns, Jedao flung himself at the narrower intruder’s feet.
The pirates did not like this. But Jedao had always been blessed, or perhaps cursed, with extraordinarily quick reflexes. He dropped his weight on one arm and leg and kicked the narrow pirate’s feet from under them with the other leg. The pirate discharged their gun, and the bullet whined over Jedao and banged into one of the status displays, causing it to spark and sputter out. Haval yelped.
Jedao had already sprung back to his feet—damn the twinge in his knees, he should have that looked into—and twisted the gun out of the narrow pirate’s grip. They had the stunned expression that Jedao was used to seeing on people who did not deal with professionals very often. He shot them, but thanks to their loose-limbed flailing, the first bullet took them in the shoulder. The second one made an ugly hole in their forehead, and they dropped.