When he came to again, the lights were back on, and Tia hovered, tilted slightly askew, above the alien city.
Below and to their right was what was left of the roofless building, now buried beneath a pile of ice, earth, and rock.
"Are you all right?" he managed, though it hurt to move his jaw.
"Space-worthy," she said, and there was no mistaking the shakiness in her voice. "Barely. I'll be as leaky as a sieve in anything but the main cabin and the passenger section, though. And I don't know about my drives, hang on, we're being hailed."
The screen flickered and filled with the image of Neil, with Chria Chance in the background. "AH One-Oh-Three-Three, is that you? I assume you had a good reason for playing 'chicken' with a mountain?"
"It's us," Alex replied, feeling all of his energy drain out as his adrenaline level dropped. "There's another one of your playmates under that rockpile."
"Ah." Neil said nothing more, simply nodded. "All's well then. Can you come up to us?"
"We aren't going to be making any landings," Tia pointed out. "But I don't know about the state of our drives."
Chria leaned over her partner's shoulder. "I wouldn't trust them if I were you," she said. "But if you get up here, we can take you in tow and hold you in orbit until one of the transports shows up. Then you ride home in their bay."
"It's a deal," Alex told her, then, with a lift of an eyebrow, "I didn't know you could do that"
"There's a lot you don't know," she told him. "Is that all right with you, Tia?"
"At this point, just about anything would be all right with me," she replied. "We're on the way."
Tia was still a little dizzy from the call she'd gotten from the Institute. When you're refitted, we'd like you to take the first Team into what we think is the EsKay homeworld. You and Alexander have the most experience, in situations where plague is a possibility, of any other courier on contract to us. It had only made sense; to this day no one knew what had paralyzed her. She had a vested interest in making sure the team stayed healthy, and an even bigger one in helping to find the bug.
Of course, they knew that. And they knew she would never buy out her contract until this assignment was over. Blackmail? Assuredly. But it was a form of blackmail she could live with.
Besides, if her plan worked, she would soon be digging with the Prime Team, not just watching them. It might take a while, but sooner or later, she'd have enough money made from her investments.
Once she paid for the repairs, that is. From the remarks of the techs working on her hull, they would not be cheap.
Then Stirling stunned her again, presenting her with the figures in her account.
"So, my dear lady," said Stirling, "between an unspecified reward from the Drug Enforcement Arm, the bonus for decoding the purpose of the EsKay navbook, the fine return from your last investment, and the finders' fee for that impressive treasure trove, you are quite a wealthy shell-person."
"So I see," Tia replied, more than a little dazed. "But what about the bill for repairs?"
"Covered by CenSec." Stirling wasn't precisely gloating, but he was certainly enjoying himself. "And if you don't mind my saying so, that was my work. I merely repeated what you had told me about the situation, pointed out that your damages were due entirely to a civilian aiding in the apprehension of dangerous criminals, and CenSec seemed positively eager to have the bills transferred over. When I mentioned how you had kept their ship from ambush from the ground, they decided you needed that Singularity Drive you've always wanted."
She suspected he had done more than merely mention it... perhaps she ought to see if she could get Lee Stirling as her Advocate, instead of the softperson she had, who had done nothing about the repairs or the drive! So, she would not have to spend a single penny of all those bonuses on her own repairs! "What about my investments in the prosthetics firm? And what if I take my bonus money and plow it back into Moto-Prosthetics?"
"Doing brilliantly. And if you do that, hmm, do you realize you'll have a controlling interest?" Stirling sounded quite amazed. "Is this something you wanted? You could buy out your contract with all this. Or get yourself an entire new refit internally and externally."
"Yes," she replied firmly. She was glad that Alex wasn't aboard at the moment, even though she felt achingly lonely without the sounds of his footsteps or his tuneless whistling. This was something she needed absolute privacy for." In fact, I am going to need a softperson proxy to go to the Board of Directors for me."
"Now?" Stirling asked.
"As soon as I have controlling interest," she replied. "The sooner the better." And it can't be soon enough to suit me.
Alex looked deeply into the bottom of his glass and decided that this one was going to be his last. He had achieved the state of floating that passed for euphoria; any more and he would pass it, and become disgustingly drunk. Probably a weepy drunk, too, all things considered. That would be a bad thing; despite his civilian clothing, someone might recognize him as a CS brawn, and that would be trouble. Besides, this was a high-class bar as spaceport bars went; human bartender, subdued, restful lighting, comfortable booths and stools, good music that was not too loud. They didn't need a maudlin drunk; they really didn't need any drunk. No point in ruining other people's evening just because his life was a mess.
He felt the lump in his throat and knew one more drink would make it spill over into an outpouring of emotion. The bartender leaned over and said, confidingly, "Buddy, if I were you, I'd cut off about now."
Alex nodded, a little surprised, and swallowed back the lump. Had liability laws gotten to the point where bartenders were watching their customers for risky behavior? "Yeah. What I figured." He sniffed a bit and told himself to straighten up before he became an annoyance.
The bartender, a human, which was why Alex had chosen to drink away his troubles here, if such a thing was possible, did not leave. Instead, he polished the slick pseudo-wooden bar beside Alex with a spotless cloth, and said, casually, "If you don't mind my saying so, buddy, you look like a man with a problem or two."
Alex laughed, mirthlessly. The man had no idea. "Yeah. Guess so."
"You want to talk about it?" the bartender persisted. "That's what they hire me for. That's why you're paying so much for the drinks."
Alex squinted up at the man, who was perfectly ordinary in a way that seemed very familiar. Conservative haircut, conservative, casual clothing. Nothing about the face or the expression to mark him except a certain air of friendly concern. It was that 'air' that tipped him off. It was very polished, very professional. "Counselor?" he asked, finally.
The bartender nodded to a framed certificate over the three shelves of antique and exotic bottles behind the bar. "Licensed. Confidential. Freelance. Been in the business for five years. You probably can't tell me anything I haven't heard a hundred times before."
Freelance and confidential meant that whatever Alex told him would stay with him, and would not be reported back to his superiors. Alex was both surprised and unsurprised. The Counselor-attended bars had been gaining in popularity when he had graduated. He just hadn't known they'd gotten that popular. He certainly hadn't expected to find one out here, at a refit station. People tended to pour out their problems when they'd been drinking; someone back on old Terra had figured out that it might be a good idea to give them someone to talk to who might be able to tender some reasonable advice. Now, so he'd heard, there were more Counselors behind bars than there were in offices, and a large number of bartenders were (going back to school to get Counselor's licenses.