The Moonsweet Blossom had few armaments, mostly intended for dealing with high-velocity debris, which was more of a danger than pirates if one kept to the better-policed trade routes. They wouldn’t do any good against Du Station’s defenses. As signals, on the other hand—
Using the lasers, Jedao flashed, HERE WE COME in the merchanter signal code. With any luck, Haval was paying attention.
AT THIS POINT, several things happened.
Haval kicked Teshet in the shin to get him to stop watching a mildly pornographic and not very well-acted drama about a famous courtesan from 192 years ago. (“It’s historical, so it’s educational!” he protested. “One, we’ve got our signal, and two, I wish you would take care of your urgent needs in your own quarters,” Haval said.)
Carp 1 through Carp 4 and 7 through 10 launched all their shuttles. Said shuttles were, as Jedao had instructed, full of variable-coefficient lubricant programmed to its liquid form. The shuttles flew toward Du Station, then opened their holds and burned their retro thrusters for all they were worth. The lubricant, carried forward by momentum, continued toward Du Station’s turret levels.
Du Station recognized an attack when it saw one, but its defenses consisted of a combination of high-powered lasers, which could only vaporize small portions of the lubricant and were useless for altering the momentum of quantities of the stuff, and railguns, whose projectiles punched through the mass without effect. Once the lubricant had clogged up the defensive emplacements, Carp 1 transmitted an encrypted radio signal that caused the lubricant to harden in place.
The Moonsweet Blossom linked up with Haval’s merchant troop. At this point, the Blossom only contained two people, trivial compared to the amount of mass it had been designed to haul. The merchant troop, of course, had just divested itself of its cargo. The nine heptarchate vessels proceeded to hightail it out of there at highly non-freighter accelerations.
JEDAO AND MENG swept the Moonsweet Blossom for bugs and other unwelcome devices, an exhausting but necessary task. Then, at what Jedao judged to be a safe distance from Du Station, he ordered Meng to slave it to Carp 1.
The Carp 1 and Moonsweet Blossom matched velocities, and Jedao and Meng made the crossing to the former. There was a bad moment when Jedao thought Meng was going to unhook their tether and drift off into the smothering dark rather than face their fate. But whatever temptations where running through their head, Meng resisted them.
Haval and Teshet greeted them on the Blossom. After Jedao and Meng had shed the suits and checked them for needed repairs, Haval ushered them all into the business office. “I didn’t expect you to spring the trademoth as well as our Shuos friend,” Haval said.
Meng wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“What about the rest of the crew?” Teshet said.
“They didn’t make it,” Jedao said, and sneezed. He explained about Meng’s extracurricular activities over the past thirteen years. Then he sneezed again.
Haval grumbled under her breath. “Whatever the hell you did on Du, Sren, did it involve duels?”
“‘Sren’?” Meng said.
“You don’t think I came into the Gwa Reality under my own”—sneeze—“name, did you?” Jedao said. “Anyway, there might have been an incident...”
Meng groaned. “Just how good is your Tlen Gwa?”
“Sort of not, apparently,” Jedao said. “I really need to have a word with whoever wrote the Tlen Gwa course. I thought I was all right with languages at the basic phrase level, but was the proofreader asleep the day they approved it?”
Meng had the grace to look embarrassed. “I may have hacked it.”
“You what?”
“If I’d realized you’d be using it, I wouldn’t have bothered. Botching the language doesn’t seem to have slowed you down any.”
Wordlessly, Teshet handed Jedao a handkerchief, and Jedao promptly sneezed into it. Maybe he’d be able to give his mother a gift of a petri dish with a lovely culture of Gwa-an germs after all. He’d have to ask the medic about it later.
Teshet then produced a set of restraints from his pockets and gestured at Meng. Meng sighed deeply and submitted to being trussed up.
“Don’t look so disappointed,” Teshet said into Jedao’s ear. “I’ve another set just for you.” Then he and Meng marched off to the brig.
Haval cleared her throat. “Off to the medic with you,” she said to Jedao. “We’d better figure out why your vaccinations aren’t working and if everyone’s going to need to be quarantined.”
“Not arguing,” Jedao said meekly.
SOME DAYS LATER, Jedao was rewatching one of Teshet’s pornography dramas in bed. At least, he thought it was pornography. The costuming made it difficult to tell, and the dialogue had made more sense when he was still running a fever.
The medic had kept him in isolation until they declared him no longer contagious. Whether due to this precaution or pure luck, no one else came down with the duel. They’d given him a clean bill of health this morning, but Haval had insisted that he rest a little longer.
The door opened. Jedao looked up in surprise.
Teshet entered with a fresh supply of handkerchiefs. “Well, Jedao, we’ll re-enter heptarchate space in two days, high calendar. Any particular orders you want me to relay to Haval?” He obligingly handed over a slate so Jedao could look over Haval’s painstaking, not to say excruciatingly detailed, reports on their current status.
“Haval’s doing a fine job,” Jedao said, glad that his voice no longer came out as a croak. “I won’t get in her way.” He returned the slate to Teshet.
“Sounds good.” Teshet turned his back and departed. Jedao admired the view, wishing in spite of himself that the other man would linger.
Teshet returned half an hour later with two clear vials full of unidentified substances. “First or second?” he said, holding them up to the light one by one.
“I’m sorry,” Jedao said, “first or second what?”
“You look like you need cheering up,” Teshet said hopefully. “You want on top, you want me on top? I’m flexible.”
Jedao blinked, trying to parse this. “On top of wh—?” Oh. “What’s in those vials?”
“You have your choice of variable-coefficient lubricant or goose fat,” Teshet said. “Assuming you were telling the truth when you said it was goose fat. And don’t yell at Haval for letting me into your refrigerator, I did it all on my own. I admit I can’t tell the difference. As Haval will attest, I’m a dreadful cook, so I didn’t want to fry up some scallion pancakes just to taste the goose fat.”
Jedao’s mouth went dry, which had less to do with Teshet’s eccentric choice of lubricants than the fact that he had sat down on the edge of Jedao’s bed. “You don’t have anything more, ah, conventional?” He realized that was a mistake as soon as the words left his mouth; he’d essentially accepted Teshet’s proposition.