"No, thank you," Pahner replied, putting his hand on the prince's shoulder. "For making the transition. For surviving. Hell, for saving all of our asses. Thank you from all of us."
* * *
The party had descended to the point at which Erkum Pol had to be dragged down before he hit someone with a plank, and Roger had gotten Despreaux off to one side. She'd been quiet all night, and he thought he knew why.
"You're still insisting that you can't marry me, aren't you?" he asked.
"Yes, and I wish you'd quit asking," she replied, looking down the hills to the Krath city in the valley. "I'm short, Roger. I'll stick along to Earth, and I'll do what I can to get your mother out of danger. But I won't marry you. When we're settled, and things are safe, I'm putting in my discharge papers. And then I'll take my severance bonus and go find me a nice, safe, placid farmer to marry."
"Court is just another environment," Roger protested. "You've been through a hundred on this planet, alone. You can adjust!"
"I probably could," she said, shaking her head. "But not well enough. What you need is someone like Eleanora, someone who knows the rocks and shoals. Part of the problem is that we're too alike. We both have a very direct approach, and you need someone who can complement you, not enhance your negative qualities."
"You'll stay until Earth, right?" he asked. "Promise you'll stay until then."
"I promise," she said. "And now, I'm turning in, Roger." She stopped and looked at him with a cocked head. "I'll make an offer one last time. Come with me?"
"Not if you won't marry me," he said.
"Okay," she sighed. "God, we're both stubborn."
"Yeah," Roger said, as she walked away. "Stubborn's one word."
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
"We've never had a 'health and welfare' inspection before," the voice said suspiciously.
"Yeah, tell me something I don't know." Jin controlled his voice carefully, sliding just the right hint of exasperation into it. "We've got a task force with an IBI inspection team coming out, and we need to make a big show. Personally, I think they're operating on the theory that everyone needs a good shaking up after the coup attempt, but what do I know? According to The Book, we're supposed to do these things on every ship, not that anybody ever did it! But now we're under the gun, so we're trying to get a paper trail going."
There was a long pause, and Jin wished that he could see the other's face, but the freighter had supplied only a voice channel.
Emerald Dawn was a known ship. She'd passed through the system at least twice before, once since Jin had been inserted. She generally traded minor technological trinkets like fire-starters for local gems and artwork. In addition, she got a small fee for dropping electronic transfers in the system, which was the real reason for her visits. As a matter of fact, he'd talked with the ship on her previous run, and he hoped the familiarity of his voice would lull them to some extent.
"Okay," a new voice said finally. "This is Captain Dennis. One person can come aboard for your 'health and welfare' check. But this is the last time I'm coming to this port. I don't need this aggravation for a handful of cheap-ass gems, a mail chit that barely covers our air loss, and a cargo of scummy art-shit."
"Whatever." Jin let a bit of the peevish bureaucrat into his tone. "I'm just doing my job."
The shuttle was on autopilot, so he slid out of the pilot's chair with a nod at Poertena, and pulled his way aft. This was made somewhat difficult by the fact that the small craft was crammed with Marines in battle armor. Most of them had clamped onto the walls and floors, but a few were drifting, more or less at random.
He stopped opposite Captain Pahner, whose feet were stuck to the ceiling as he stood "head-down," perusing the schematics for the target.
"They're not real happy," the IBI agent said.
"I don't care if they're happy," Pahner said. "Just as long as they open their doors."
"One shot, and we're all vapor," Jin noted.
"And as far as they know, they're suddenly the most wanted ship in the Empire," Pahner pointed out. "It would be very bad form for a tramp freighter to shoot up an official Imperial inspection craft. They'll let us dock. After that, you just hit the deck."
* * *
"Why does this make my butt pucker?" Fiorello Giovannuci—known to the dirt-side com station as "Captain Dennis"—asked as he gazed at the viewscreen image of the approaching small craft.
"Because your butt always puckers when we get boarded." Amanda Beach, his first officer, shook her head in mock gravity. "Relax. It's got all the codes for an Imperial customs ship. Really, it's because your conscience isn't pure. You need to spend some time on the planets, reacquiring your oneness with Gaia."
Giovannuci glanced at her, then shook his own head and sighed.
"Your sense of humor is the reason you're out here, you know. Just keep it up." He leaned forward, as if the viewscreen could tell him more if he only stared hard enough, and rubbed his cheek. "And you're wrong. There's something very much not right here."
"You want me to go down to the airlock?" Beach asked as the CO fell silent, watching the shuttle make its final approach. He continued to say nothing for several more seconds, but, finally, he nodded.
"Yes. And take Longo and Ucelli."
"My," she said, pursing her lips as she got to her feet, "you are nervous. Isn't that sort of overkill?"
"Better over than under," Giovannuci said. "Go. Fast."
* * *
Jin waited until all the telltales turned green, then opened the airlock door and swung forward through it cautiously. The three people waiting for him represented a fair percentage of the total crew for a tramp like this, and their presence in such numbers indicated just how uncomfortable they must be.
He'd have been just as nervous in their shoes. The profit which could be made from "jacking" ships like this were enough to make them high-priority targets. Even a tramp as old and beat up as Emerald Dawn was worth nearly a billion credits. So anytime one was parked anywhere but at a fully secured port—which did not, by any stretch, describe Marduk—its crew was always on the lookout for pirates. And it wasn't impossible to imagine the entire port being captured, or even that one Temu Jin would be in on it. Stranger things had transpired in the borderlands.
Besides, now that he thought about it, that was actually a pretty fair description, in a slightly skewed way, of what was actually going to happen.
The threesome had obviously been chosen with some care. According to her collar tabs, the woman was senior, a merchant lieutenant, so probably she was Emerald Dawn's second-in-command. She looked a bit long in the tooth for that, and fairly beat up. Regen healed almost perfectly, but scars were inevitable—at least when a limb hadn't had to be completely regrown—and this one, for all her striking looks, had plenty. She'd been in more than one fight, and a couple of them must have been with knives.
The second most notable was the largest of the group, a hulking figure which outmassed even the redoubtable Gronningen. But something about him told Jin that he was one of those big, fast men people tended to underestimate on the theory that anyone that big had to be too slow to be dangerous. He would bear watching.
For that matter, so would the little guy. He was the calmest seeming of the lot as he leaned nonchalantly against a bulkhead, but the low-slung double pistols sort of said it all.
And all three of them wore light body armor.
Jin stepped forward carefully, keeping his hands in view at all times, and extended the pad.
"Pax, okay?" He tabbed the controls and gestured around. "All I want is a thumbprint saying that the 'inspection' was complete, and that you have no complaints. I'll put in all sorts of stuff checked, basically half the stuff on your manifest. And we're all happy. I'm happy, you're happy, the IBI asshole is happy, and everybody can go back to business as usual."