"Boarding party ready," he said shortly.
"Stand by," Mirina said, turning back to the viewtank. "How long to the drop?"
Sunset ran through one of those instantaneous mental calculations that seemed so effortless for his people.
"Eight minutes, madam."
"Don't call me madam," Mirina snapped, yanked back with annoyance from her planning.
"Sorry again," he said, contritely. "Thunderstorm told me always to use titles of respect."
Mirina felt the corners of her mouth start to turn upward in an unwilling smile. "My name will do. Thank you. Stand by."
"At least he isn't calling you 'holy one,' any more," her brother called from the engineer's seat, where he was waiting to operate the airlock and grapple controls.
Sunset glanced up at the human male, then hastily ducked his head. Bisman smirked at the young Thelerie, his narrow jaws drawn upward. Mirina glared at her co-leader.
"Isn't anyone else here thinking of business?"
"On my way," he said, fending off the evil eye with an uplifted hand.
"Wait a minute, Aldon," Mirina said, as he turned to go. "Remember, just grab those containers and go. No killing."
"That's the idea, lady," he said, offhandedly, holding his helmet up over his head and shaking it to free the hanging tabs. "Strike hard so they don't know where you're coming from, then move out. But I'm not going to stand helpless and let them tickle me. My people will use self-defense as needed." Mirina moved to place herself in his path.
"Disarm and disable only. Those are my orders. Just take the stuff and go!"
He paid no attention as he clamped the headpiece into place. The seals whistled a diminishing scale as he sidestepped her and stalked away down the corridor toward the airlock.
Mirina stared after him, feeling fury rising fit to choke her. There wasn't time to lecture him again, and she was beginning to feel like she was losing control of him. She'd turned this operation around into a profit-making enterprise. He and his miserable little group had only three pathetically archaic ships when she met him eight years ago. Now they had sixty, and more under construction. She'd been confirmed as the leader by a majority of the vote. But there were some people who couldn't take direction from anyone, especially from not a former government spacer like her. Bisman had been raiding for thirty years, had started under his father, who'd owned the original three ships. Anyone who'd survived that long deserved respect, just for sheer longevity, but damn it, it was bad for crew morale to have him defy her every single order. She snatched up her remote communications headset and clamped it down on her head.
Zonzalo sat in the engineer's seat snickering. Mirina rounded on him.
"What are you laughing at? You couldn't survive in a planetside shopping center."
"Hey," he held up helpless hands. "I didn't say anything. It just reminds me of Mom and Dad, how you two carry on."
"I suppose I asked for that," Mirina said, feeling her cheeks burn. "But I want him to remember what I say."
"It won't help," Zonzalo said. "It never does. I don't know why you keep trying."
Mirina shook her head. She and Bisman had had an affair when she first shipped with them eight Standard years before. He was twenty years older than she. She was attracted by his maturity, by his long, lean looks, daredevil attitude, and hard-driving determination. He liked her clear-sighted organizational bent, and he complimented her on her figure, saying he liked a curvy armful. They'd broken off the physical side of their relationship when they found they couldn't work together and be lovers. He thought she was compulsive. She hated his collections of little knicknacks and his untidy way of thinking. He'd said she was too bossy. She'd known his recklessness would get them all killed. At almost any cost Mirina wanted to stay in space, but serving under a hot dog who thought he was Jean Lafitte or Xak Milliane Ya was just out of her price range. Bisman was too casual about killing. Mirina wasn't a complete innocent. She had been involved with, or rather felt responsible for, the death of one so dear to her she'd never recovered from it. Mirina never wanted to feel like that again, but she was exposed to the possibility over and over every time their ship went reiving. So, at risk of having Bisman mutiny and strand her and Zonzalo somewhere out of frustration, she kept on his back about safety and minimum use of force.
"You are just like my teacher, Thunderstorm," Sunset said, in his resonant voice, glancing up as his four hands performed his tasks. "He tells and tells, but I make my mistakes all the same."
Zonzalo laughed. He'd become friends with the Thelerie, partly because they were the youngest beings on board and partly because he thought Sunset's innocent pronouncements hilarious.
"She is just exactly like a thunderstorm in space, isn't she?" Zonzalo said. "Uh-oh, the clouds are moving toward me." Mirina advanced upon him and glared down. Zonzalo pretended to cower, his shoulders hunched. Mirina swatted him lightly across the back.
"Act like adults," she snapped. "In case you weren't listening, some of our spacers are going down there. Their safety depends on you, too. Pay attention to your boards." The two young males exchanged humorous glances, then concentrated on their screens.
"Approach final. Attacking speed," Glashton said, not looking up from his console. "Grapples away!"
On the main tank, the background of stars shimmered as the forcefields locked onto five points surrounding the space station. The engines filled the ship with the scream of abused metal as the reiver dumped velocity, using the grapple anchors to halt forward momentum. On external camera, Mirina watched as the flexible white tube shot outward from the side of her ship to cover the airlock of the repair port and sucked closed. Bulbous-headed shadows inside it-Bisman's raiders in armor-bounded downward. There was an actinic flash, from which everyone in the cockpit automatically shielded his or her eyes, then Glashton switched video and audio input to a suit-mounted cam on the uniform of one of the raiders.
The crew plunged ahead into the darkness of the landing bay. Narrow beams of light slashed through the black tunnel, picking out steel-riveted walls, signs and directions etched in enamel next to huge louvered doors and at intersections. Two raiders found a communications circuit box and blasted it with slugs and energy weapons. That should have cut off external communications, but it also caused the inhabitants of the station to take notice. Sirens wailed in the distance. Blurred figures, bleached white by the raiders' searchlights, cannoned into view, weapons leveled. Bisman's people were ready. Mirina watched arms being raised, saw the spark of muzzle-flash. The defenders fell, arms splayed. A few of the raiders ran forward to collect their guns.
Bisman's voice barked hoarsely. "They'll only be out for about twenty minutes. Find the control room. Find the lights! Move it!"
Mirina held her breath as the camera eye followed the bobbing forms deeper into the repair facility. Someone found the control for the lights. The white blurs coalesced into armored backs and armloads of equipment. The siren's discordance chewed away at her nerves until she was tapping her foot with impatience, mentally urging Bisman to hurry and get out of there.
The louvered doors flapped up one by one, revealing empty bays. Suddenly, a door rolled up, and the hoped-for containers were right in front of the video pickup. The inventory numbers for ion-drive engine parts were printed on the side and top of each case. Zonzalo and Glashton cheered. Mirina pointed at the corral of heavy-loaders in the foreground of the screen, and snapped an order into the headset mike. Bisman had seen them, too. His hand appeared in the lens, making an "OK" symbol.