[nano] Corsair
Nov. 5th, 2009 01:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittydesade[The man sitting across from her is smiling. Not as tall as most men, these days, he's perfect for space travel. Perfect for her; she's about his height. He sits across from her with his legs crossed and his shoulders leaned back in the chair at a relaxed angle, one elbow on the arm rest and his fingers tapping at his chin and lower lip.
"You think I should take the offer." Valerie resigns herself to an argument with her friend. A debate, at least. She knows that expression and that smile, and knows that he is delighted she's received this missive. It occurs to her to wonder why, but when Ran smiles like that there will be no prying the information out of him until he's ready to cough it up. Usually when it makes him look the best.
Ran nods after an interval of silence, leaning forward and spreading his hands in a presenting gesture as though it was all his idea. "I think you should take the offer."
"I knew it."
"Valerie!" Spreading out all three syllables of her name, laughing. "I'm serious. I think you should take the offer."
It's impossible to stay too mad at him when he's like this. Too mad. She retains her irritation at his showy ways and his stinginess with information, and points a warning finger at him. "Tread lightly, who speaks in hope of alliance."
"Wisdom for your lips; I stand rebuked." And he does, bowing. Then he sits down. "No, I do think you should take the job. They're a good company, they're bonded so you know they're honest, and they asked for you personally. Means they've seen your CV and they've seen your record, and they know your skills. And it means that they think you'd be a good fit for them…"
"And what about if they'd be a good fit for me? They're bonded but that's all anyone knows about them. They have no public record. They say they've been in business for some time but I can't find anything on them…"
Ran grimaces, like a child has done something he knew would lead to harm but thought it best to let that be discovered for its own sake and the lesson it would teach. "I told them that was a bad idea. Here…" He uncovers her terminal, and his fingers dance on the screen. "Look up Bishop Securities."
She leans over his shoulder and frowns at what a few changes of letters reveal. All right, a simple name change, and now there is a company history. A context into which to put this mysterious and enigmatical job offer she's tossed into her lap. There was enough there to form an idea of the company at least, if not an opinion, not without meeting a representative.
But then, she's already in the presence of a representative of the company, isn't she.
"Why did you recommend me to them?" she asks, without turning around or raising the volume or tone of her voice. She won't look at him while he prevaricates with his expression until he comes up with an answer.
It's quicker than she expects. "Because you are good at what you do, and because they are good at what they do. And what they do isn't…" Now he does hesitate, picking the words out carefully one by one from the thoughts swirling around his mind. "It is not the kind of work that most people would believe is necessary or right to do."
She isn't sure what he means by that, though it doesn't sound good. "Necessary or right to do?"
"They hold beliefs that are considered radical in some nations, or at the very least misguidedly optimistic. They believe they can…" He shakes his head because he knows that her thinned lips and flared nostrils disbelieve what he is saying. "It's true. I don't always approve of their methods, but they do hold to certain beliefs, and they act on them. They truly are trying to make the world a better place, Valerie."
She folds her arms at him and doesn't believe it. "You know you sound like a propaganda film," she says, and he knows he's lost her.
"At least consider their offer? Please? For me, for old times' sake," he smiles, takes her hand. "You know I wouldn't ask you if I didn't believe you wouldn't fit there, or enjoy working with and for them."
She does. He knows her, as she knows him, as they've been friends for many years. Through his failed marriage and her failed partnership and the first failed business and her first failed ship, his first failed attempt at joining a law enforcement association. He had broken too many rules and gotten a polite boot to the arse. She had been there through all that, as he had been there for her, and they know each other. For that, she'll give the company one chance.
Valerie nods, slumping back in her chair. "One chance. I'll give them one interview, and I make no promises. We'll see." She looks over at him. "I'm fine where I am, you know."
"I know." He shrugs. "They needed new people."
"Mmm."]
Valerie was still trying to get the details out of Tanner when the Tommy walked in. Right, the messenger, they didn't like being called Tommys. Trans-Orbital Mentalist, though she wasn't sure what any of that meant, the words didn't seem to make perfect sense in that context. Then again, she also didn't know what exactly they did to these people who signed in to the Mentalist's guild. She knew she didn't want to know, and that was the extent of it.
He called himself Krishna, no last name. She had asked him if that was typical of the Guild, for people to go by first names alone or if it was some sort of rule or tenet of their group, and he'd only smiled and avoided the question neatly enough that she hadn't realized until a couple hours later that he hadn't answered it. The look was typical of a Tommy, though. Pupils contracted to pinpricks, swallowed up by the color of the iris, fair hair straight and combed back and short-cropped. Wearing bland clothing, walking at an even gait, never hurrying.
She could see the point of the never hurrying, but the rest of it gave them an overall disquieting look.
"Krishna, good…" What time was it? "Afternoon."
"Good afternoon, Captain." He smiled. He had a nice smile, if it weren't for the face that he didn't act like he was actually looking at her. "I wondered if we could go over the schedule for a moment, if you have one to spare."
"A schedule?"
His hazel eyes never blinked. Tommys had no sense of humor that she could find. They were able to convey the humor of the message's originator down to the tone and facial tics, which was also uncanny, but they had no sense of humor in and of themselves.
"Of course," she said, after the silence stretched out and he didn't do anything, and heads were starting to turn one by one all over the bridge. "Did you have a concern?"
"Nothing specific. I wanted to go over the stops with you and inquire if we were still on time for Alcubierre Station."
Valerie nodded. "As far as I know, barring unforeseen complications. Our flight path is clear, we haven't hit any debris or lost momentum." Space travel between take-off and landing, or docking and leaving if you were a space-bound vessel, could be boring that way.
"If there is something you and your crew could occupy yourselves with, I have a message that may be delivered on the moon Papillon."
Only a Tommy would dare. Messages, mail, packages she could live with. Human recording devices gave her an uncomfortable feeling down her spine. "Are you negotiating our terms?"
"Not at all, Captain. This is more along the lines of a friendly request."
A friendly request that would have consequences if she refused. No, that wasn't fair, she had never known a … a Mentalist to make that kind of request. They simply asked, and if it wasn't convenient, they would deliver their message by sat phone. Still, it was odd. Usually they were up front about what they needed, sometimes hiring on three or four different courier ships if they had to, for a single journey inward or outward.
"Is there a reason for this sudden change of plans?" she asked.
"There is."
No, she wouldn't get a further answer. The reason had to do with a client, and client confidentiality was sacrosanct. Which she could accept without difficulty.
"As long as there's a reason, then. Are there any other changes to the schedule that you'd like to make, since we're discussing it?"
The note in her voice made everyone go back to their work instead of eavesdropping on their conversation, as she'd intended. One of those little upward lilts to the end. The look out of the corner of her eyes that crossed from one side of the bridge across the rear doors and over to the other side. The folded arms that said anyone caught not paying attention to their work would suffer consequences. With a capital C, Consequences.
"No, of course not." Krishna nodded, a gesture that might as well have been a bow, his hands clasped together at his waist. "I am grateful to you for extending the courtesy."
She didn't do well with gratitude from people she knew, let alone from strangers. "Just doing my job, sir. Now, if you'll excuse me…"
"Of course." And now he did smile, a little, as he moved towards the doors. "I believe you have something of your own to attend to."
She was still frowning after the door closed, wondering what he had meant by that. There were rumors of people with prescience, precognitive abilities, rumors that one government or another had been working on a program to cultivate such talents, that some of the modifications the Tommys underwent were a part of those experiments. Whether they wanted it or not.
Valerie shook it off and put it aside until Crash Kedrick caught her attention again and motioned her over to the communications station.
"If this is another Mentalist thing…"
Kedrick shook her head. "No? I don't believe so, anyway, Captain, but I do think you should … um…" And she handed the earpiece, just about pressed it into Valerie's hand.
Valerie gave her communications officer a strange look and put on the earpiece.
"Hey there, Captain."
She felt her mouth drop open a little, her cheeks flush and her eyes narrow. As though she could glare at him when he wasn't even on the ship, yet, but she wanted to. "Ran. What are you…"
"Permission to come aboard?"
She would have sworn he was waving at her through the line.
"I'll take it in my office."
She thanked her guiding stars he wasn't actually in some sort of go-fast ship outside her Corsair. She really might have killed him for that.
"What do you want, Ran?" Valerie folded her arms and tried to glare at the camera but it didn't work. Glaring at Ran was hard when he was a distance away, and giving her that smile. That bright and cheerful mischievous one where the mischief was never meant to cause harm and usually involved laughter of some surprising kind. The signal was clear, which meant that whatever ship he was in he was somewhere nearby, and most likely on a direct line to her ship at a similar rate of speed. Coasting behind her, perhaps.
Except that it wasn't any of her business what kind of ship he was on, or whose, or anything except where he was and what he wanted out of this conversation. And she could stop thinking about what that mischievous glint in his warm dark eyes portended. They were grown adults. They weren't in school anymore. She shouldn't get involved.
"Like I said, permission to come aboard." Wide, guileless eyes. Hands spread to indicate a position of innocence. They both knew she wasn't going to buy that.
"For what purpose?"
"I need to go somewhere," he shrugged. "I need to deliver some information to one of our clients, and they took away my go-fast ship." Which answered that question and opened up a whole host of others, such as, what was he flying now? And how many people were on it, and if he was the only one flying it what was he going to do when he was on her ship? And if he wasn't the only one flying it, what had he said to get this message time with her and the Corsair?
She shook her head, kept her arms folded, her posture braced against whatever it was he had to say. "You're selling it too much, you know. You could have stopped with just the who-me eyes and not done the gestures or tried to push this that much. Whatever this is. You don't need to pull that innocent act on me, I already know you too well for that."
Ran laughed. Easy as that, dropping stance and attitude and back to his impish old self again. "Sorry. Force of habit. I need a ride, Valerie. And I have a pr…"
"No."
"So you won't marry me?"
She stopped in mid-sentence. He must have known she was going to anticipate him trying to recruit her again, that was the only explanation for why he would say something like that. Her face flushed again, deeper than it had before on the bridge, her eyes widened and crinkled with delight. Her arms fell back to her sides as her shoulders relaxed. She started laughing, then had to lean on the desk.
"There, now, don't you feel better?" His rolling accent was well suited to that kind of gentle amusement, and she shook her head. Irritating as he could be, she missed him when he wasn't around.
"All right. I will admit, that was funny. But what do you want, Ran. You need a ride to where?" This was starting to get odd. Or tiresome, or both. First the Tommy wanted a ride off their planned route and now Ran was trying to detour her somewhere else. Possibly. It felt like a giant conspiracy to delay and confuse her.
"Just to Sagan. You're headed there, right? That was the last stop on your listed route?"
Courier routes had to be listed, point of origin and destination were made public along with the ship's schedule, so that those who needed their messages taken could negotiate fees. Any other stops along the way could be made public or kept private at the discretion of the captain. It wasn't a perfect privacy system; a route could be extrapolated based on the time between stops. It had worked for Valerie so far, though.
"Sagan, yes." Valerie frowned. "Capital City, I thought you were still flying for Bryce."
"I am. But I have business on Sagan, and I wondered if maybe I could hitch a ride with you? For old times' sake."
She blinked at the screen for a second before finally taking her seat. "There's more to this going on than you're telling me. I know that, you wouldn't ask a favor like that if there wasn't more to this than you're telling …" on an open channel. They were talking on an open channel. Or was she being paranoid. He wasn't usually this cagey. Now that she thought about it in those terms, he wasn't cagey at all. He was one of the more direct people she knew, as direct as he could be and still knowing the meaning of discretion as he did. There had to be some pretext she could find to get them to meet face to face in a private setting. Normally she wouldn't have needed a pretext on her own ship and yet this time she couldn't help but wonder.
"Would you care to share a drink with me when you get on board?" It was easier than asking him to tell her right now.
"I'd love that," he smiled, and this time it was a smile that warmed his eyes and reminded her of old times playing games in smoke-filled bars with blue-lit glasses and crackling music. School days, spending evenings in a rush of text and alcohol. "We can catch up, share our thoughts on the latest rumors of conflict…"
That was new. They never talked politics before. "We can do that. I hear war is in the offing…"
"Now, you didn't hear that from me."
Why would she have heard that from him?
What was he up to.
"We'll have a lot to talk about, I see." She stretched the words out without meaning to, talking around her thoughts.
"That we will. If you'll slow down a bit I should be within range to catch you in two hours."
"I'll give the word," she nodded. "Safe flight."
"And to you." He signed off. Valerie sat back in her chair and watched her reflection in the black screen tap its fingers against the surface of the desk.
It wasn't rational, and it wasn't necessarily safe for her to be this excited about having him on the ship again. Yes, it would be good to see her friend. Who was acting strangely, talking about things as though they meant more than they should have or as though they did things habitually that they had hardly ever done. It was like reading a cipher she knew the key for but the message was in a language she didn't speak. Infuriating.
She'd promised to pick him up, and there was no reason not to. Her crew would think it strange if she didn't. He'd caught rides with them a dozen times before; they were a courier ship, after all. It was what they did. But the way he had talked, especially towards the end, the words he had used. All but hijacking the conversation to dangle a topic in front of her face while she knew he would yank it away and pretend he hadn't done anything the moment the conversation became interesting. The bastard.
Valerie shook her head and exited her cramped office, coming back out onto the bridge. "Slow speed," she told her pilot. "There should be a personal craft behind us, not very far. We'll be taking on another person for Sagan."
"Pay up," Tanner crowed, palms up and fingers beckoning the air. Two of her bridge crew openly grumbled and began tapping their devices, transferring money.
Valerie rolled her eyes. "I'm not seeing any of this, Tanner."
"No, Captain. Seeing any of what?"
She did a better guileless look than Ran did, anyway. "We're picking up Tamerlane, yes. He's going to speed up to meet us, let's not run into him when we're slowing down, please? And after that…" After that, who the hell knew. Her pilot looked at her until she shook her head, no further instructions. "Back on course after that."
Provided Al-Ran Tamerlane, whose real name she knew and would keep secret against some future favor she needed from him, didn't try to drag her off on some other sort of detour. Provided the Tommy didn't make another request, or another half-dozen requests. Provided something else didn't turn up to get in their way, divert them off course, or otherwise conspire to make this trip a misery. It was always this run, always the Enterprise Station to Sagan run.
Valerie pinched the bridge of her nose and slid thumb and forefinger up above her orbital sockets, right along the eyebrow. She could feel the headache coming on already.
"You think I should take the offer." Valerie resigns herself to an argument with her friend. A debate, at least. She knows that expression and that smile, and knows that he is delighted she's received this missive. It occurs to her to wonder why, but when Ran smiles like that there will be no prying the information out of him until he's ready to cough it up. Usually when it makes him look the best.
Ran nods after an interval of silence, leaning forward and spreading his hands in a presenting gesture as though it was all his idea. "I think you should take the offer."
"I knew it."
"Valerie!" Spreading out all three syllables of her name, laughing. "I'm serious. I think you should take the offer."
It's impossible to stay too mad at him when he's like this. Too mad. She retains her irritation at his showy ways and his stinginess with information, and points a warning finger at him. "Tread lightly, who speaks in hope of alliance."
"Wisdom for your lips; I stand rebuked." And he does, bowing. Then he sits down. "No, I do think you should take the job. They're a good company, they're bonded so you know they're honest, and they asked for you personally. Means they've seen your CV and they've seen your record, and they know your skills. And it means that they think you'd be a good fit for them…"
"And what about if they'd be a good fit for me? They're bonded but that's all anyone knows about them. They have no public record. They say they've been in business for some time but I can't find anything on them…"
Ran grimaces, like a child has done something he knew would lead to harm but thought it best to let that be discovered for its own sake and the lesson it would teach. "I told them that was a bad idea. Here…" He uncovers her terminal, and his fingers dance on the screen. "Look up Bishop Securities."
She leans over his shoulder and frowns at what a few changes of letters reveal. All right, a simple name change, and now there is a company history. A context into which to put this mysterious and enigmatical job offer she's tossed into her lap. There was enough there to form an idea of the company at least, if not an opinion, not without meeting a representative.
But then, she's already in the presence of a representative of the company, isn't she.
"Why did you recommend me to them?" she asks, without turning around or raising the volume or tone of her voice. She won't look at him while he prevaricates with his expression until he comes up with an answer.
It's quicker than she expects. "Because you are good at what you do, and because they are good at what they do. And what they do isn't…" Now he does hesitate, picking the words out carefully one by one from the thoughts swirling around his mind. "It is not the kind of work that most people would believe is necessary or right to do."
She isn't sure what he means by that, though it doesn't sound good. "Necessary or right to do?"
"They hold beliefs that are considered radical in some nations, or at the very least misguidedly optimistic. They believe they can…" He shakes his head because he knows that her thinned lips and flared nostrils disbelieve what he is saying. "It's true. I don't always approve of their methods, but they do hold to certain beliefs, and they act on them. They truly are trying to make the world a better place, Valerie."
She folds her arms at him and doesn't believe it. "You know you sound like a propaganda film," she says, and he knows he's lost her.
"At least consider their offer? Please? For me, for old times' sake," he smiles, takes her hand. "You know I wouldn't ask you if I didn't believe you wouldn't fit there, or enjoy working with and for them."
She does. He knows her, as she knows him, as they've been friends for many years. Through his failed marriage and her failed partnership and the first failed business and her first failed ship, his first failed attempt at joining a law enforcement association. He had broken too many rules and gotten a polite boot to the arse. She had been there through all that, as he had been there for her, and they know each other. For that, she'll give the company one chance.
Valerie nods, slumping back in her chair. "One chance. I'll give them one interview, and I make no promises. We'll see." She looks over at him. "I'm fine where I am, you know."
"I know." He shrugs. "They needed new people."
"Mmm."]
Valerie was still trying to get the details out of Tanner when the Tommy walked in. Right, the messenger, they didn't like being called Tommys. Trans-Orbital Mentalist, though she wasn't sure what any of that meant, the words didn't seem to make perfect sense in that context. Then again, she also didn't know what exactly they did to these people who signed in to the Mentalist's guild. She knew she didn't want to know, and that was the extent of it.
He called himself Krishna, no last name. She had asked him if that was typical of the Guild, for people to go by first names alone or if it was some sort of rule or tenet of their group, and he'd only smiled and avoided the question neatly enough that she hadn't realized until a couple hours later that he hadn't answered it. The look was typical of a Tommy, though. Pupils contracted to pinpricks, swallowed up by the color of the iris, fair hair straight and combed back and short-cropped. Wearing bland clothing, walking at an even gait, never hurrying.
She could see the point of the never hurrying, but the rest of it gave them an overall disquieting look.
"Krishna, good…" What time was it? "Afternoon."
"Good afternoon, Captain." He smiled. He had a nice smile, if it weren't for the face that he didn't act like he was actually looking at her. "I wondered if we could go over the schedule for a moment, if you have one to spare."
"A schedule?"
His hazel eyes never blinked. Tommys had no sense of humor that she could find. They were able to convey the humor of the message's originator down to the tone and facial tics, which was also uncanny, but they had no sense of humor in and of themselves.
"Of course," she said, after the silence stretched out and he didn't do anything, and heads were starting to turn one by one all over the bridge. "Did you have a concern?"
"Nothing specific. I wanted to go over the stops with you and inquire if we were still on time for Alcubierre Station."
Valerie nodded. "As far as I know, barring unforeseen complications. Our flight path is clear, we haven't hit any debris or lost momentum." Space travel between take-off and landing, or docking and leaving if you were a space-bound vessel, could be boring that way.
"If there is something you and your crew could occupy yourselves with, I have a message that may be delivered on the moon Papillon."
Only a Tommy would dare. Messages, mail, packages she could live with. Human recording devices gave her an uncomfortable feeling down her spine. "Are you negotiating our terms?"
"Not at all, Captain. This is more along the lines of a friendly request."
A friendly request that would have consequences if she refused. No, that wasn't fair, she had never known a … a Mentalist to make that kind of request. They simply asked, and if it wasn't convenient, they would deliver their message by sat phone. Still, it was odd. Usually they were up front about what they needed, sometimes hiring on three or four different courier ships if they had to, for a single journey inward or outward.
"Is there a reason for this sudden change of plans?" she asked.
"There is."
No, she wouldn't get a further answer. The reason had to do with a client, and client confidentiality was sacrosanct. Which she could accept without difficulty.
"As long as there's a reason, then. Are there any other changes to the schedule that you'd like to make, since we're discussing it?"
The note in her voice made everyone go back to their work instead of eavesdropping on their conversation, as she'd intended. One of those little upward lilts to the end. The look out of the corner of her eyes that crossed from one side of the bridge across the rear doors and over to the other side. The folded arms that said anyone caught not paying attention to their work would suffer consequences. With a capital C, Consequences.
"No, of course not." Krishna nodded, a gesture that might as well have been a bow, his hands clasped together at his waist. "I am grateful to you for extending the courtesy."
She didn't do well with gratitude from people she knew, let alone from strangers. "Just doing my job, sir. Now, if you'll excuse me…"
"Of course." And now he did smile, a little, as he moved towards the doors. "I believe you have something of your own to attend to."
She was still frowning after the door closed, wondering what he had meant by that. There were rumors of people with prescience, precognitive abilities, rumors that one government or another had been working on a program to cultivate such talents, that some of the modifications the Tommys underwent were a part of those experiments. Whether they wanted it or not.
Valerie shook it off and put it aside until Crash Kedrick caught her attention again and motioned her over to the communications station.
"If this is another Mentalist thing…"
Kedrick shook her head. "No? I don't believe so, anyway, Captain, but I do think you should … um…" And she handed the earpiece, just about pressed it into Valerie's hand.
Valerie gave her communications officer a strange look and put on the earpiece.
"Hey there, Captain."
She felt her mouth drop open a little, her cheeks flush and her eyes narrow. As though she could glare at him when he wasn't even on the ship, yet, but she wanted to. "Ran. What are you…"
"Permission to come aboard?"
She would have sworn he was waving at her through the line.
"I'll take it in my office."
She thanked her guiding stars he wasn't actually in some sort of go-fast ship outside her Corsair. She really might have killed him for that.
"What do you want, Ran?" Valerie folded her arms and tried to glare at the camera but it didn't work. Glaring at Ran was hard when he was a distance away, and giving her that smile. That bright and cheerful mischievous one where the mischief was never meant to cause harm and usually involved laughter of some surprising kind. The signal was clear, which meant that whatever ship he was in he was somewhere nearby, and most likely on a direct line to her ship at a similar rate of speed. Coasting behind her, perhaps.
Except that it wasn't any of her business what kind of ship he was on, or whose, or anything except where he was and what he wanted out of this conversation. And she could stop thinking about what that mischievous glint in his warm dark eyes portended. They were grown adults. They weren't in school anymore. She shouldn't get involved.
"Like I said, permission to come aboard." Wide, guileless eyes. Hands spread to indicate a position of innocence. They both knew she wasn't going to buy that.
"For what purpose?"
"I need to go somewhere," he shrugged. "I need to deliver some information to one of our clients, and they took away my go-fast ship." Which answered that question and opened up a whole host of others, such as, what was he flying now? And how many people were on it, and if he was the only one flying it what was he going to do when he was on her ship? And if he wasn't the only one flying it, what had he said to get this message time with her and the Corsair?
She shook her head, kept her arms folded, her posture braced against whatever it was he had to say. "You're selling it too much, you know. You could have stopped with just the who-me eyes and not done the gestures or tried to push this that much. Whatever this is. You don't need to pull that innocent act on me, I already know you too well for that."
Ran laughed. Easy as that, dropping stance and attitude and back to his impish old self again. "Sorry. Force of habit. I need a ride, Valerie. And I have a pr…"
"No."
"So you won't marry me?"
She stopped in mid-sentence. He must have known she was going to anticipate him trying to recruit her again, that was the only explanation for why he would say something like that. Her face flushed again, deeper than it had before on the bridge, her eyes widened and crinkled with delight. Her arms fell back to her sides as her shoulders relaxed. She started laughing, then had to lean on the desk.
"There, now, don't you feel better?" His rolling accent was well suited to that kind of gentle amusement, and she shook her head. Irritating as he could be, she missed him when he wasn't around.
"All right. I will admit, that was funny. But what do you want, Ran. You need a ride to where?" This was starting to get odd. Or tiresome, or both. First the Tommy wanted a ride off their planned route and now Ran was trying to detour her somewhere else. Possibly. It felt like a giant conspiracy to delay and confuse her.
"Just to Sagan. You're headed there, right? That was the last stop on your listed route?"
Courier routes had to be listed, point of origin and destination were made public along with the ship's schedule, so that those who needed their messages taken could negotiate fees. Any other stops along the way could be made public or kept private at the discretion of the captain. It wasn't a perfect privacy system; a route could be extrapolated based on the time between stops. It had worked for Valerie so far, though.
"Sagan, yes." Valerie frowned. "Capital City, I thought you were still flying for Bryce."
"I am. But I have business on Sagan, and I wondered if maybe I could hitch a ride with you? For old times' sake."
She blinked at the screen for a second before finally taking her seat. "There's more to this going on than you're telling me. I know that, you wouldn't ask a favor like that if there wasn't more to this than you're telling …" on an open channel. They were talking on an open channel. Or was she being paranoid. He wasn't usually this cagey. Now that she thought about it in those terms, he wasn't cagey at all. He was one of the more direct people she knew, as direct as he could be and still knowing the meaning of discretion as he did. There had to be some pretext she could find to get them to meet face to face in a private setting. Normally she wouldn't have needed a pretext on her own ship and yet this time she couldn't help but wonder.
"Would you care to share a drink with me when you get on board?" It was easier than asking him to tell her right now.
"I'd love that," he smiled, and this time it was a smile that warmed his eyes and reminded her of old times playing games in smoke-filled bars with blue-lit glasses and crackling music. School days, spending evenings in a rush of text and alcohol. "We can catch up, share our thoughts on the latest rumors of conflict…"
That was new. They never talked politics before. "We can do that. I hear war is in the offing…"
"Now, you didn't hear that from me."
Why would she have heard that from him?
What was he up to.
"We'll have a lot to talk about, I see." She stretched the words out without meaning to, talking around her thoughts.
"That we will. If you'll slow down a bit I should be within range to catch you in two hours."
"I'll give the word," she nodded. "Safe flight."
"And to you." He signed off. Valerie sat back in her chair and watched her reflection in the black screen tap its fingers against the surface of the desk.
It wasn't rational, and it wasn't necessarily safe for her to be this excited about having him on the ship again. Yes, it would be good to see her friend. Who was acting strangely, talking about things as though they meant more than they should have or as though they did things habitually that they had hardly ever done. It was like reading a cipher she knew the key for but the message was in a language she didn't speak. Infuriating.
She'd promised to pick him up, and there was no reason not to. Her crew would think it strange if she didn't. He'd caught rides with them a dozen times before; they were a courier ship, after all. It was what they did. But the way he had talked, especially towards the end, the words he had used. All but hijacking the conversation to dangle a topic in front of her face while she knew he would yank it away and pretend he hadn't done anything the moment the conversation became interesting. The bastard.
Valerie shook her head and exited her cramped office, coming back out onto the bridge. "Slow speed," she told her pilot. "There should be a personal craft behind us, not very far. We'll be taking on another person for Sagan."
"Pay up," Tanner crowed, palms up and fingers beckoning the air. Two of her bridge crew openly grumbled and began tapping their devices, transferring money.
Valerie rolled her eyes. "I'm not seeing any of this, Tanner."
"No, Captain. Seeing any of what?"
She did a better guileless look than Ran did, anyway. "We're picking up Tamerlane, yes. He's going to speed up to meet us, let's not run into him when we're slowing down, please? And after that…" After that, who the hell knew. Her pilot looked at her until she shook her head, no further instructions. "Back on course after that."
Provided Al-Ran Tamerlane, whose real name she knew and would keep secret against some future favor she needed from him, didn't try to drag her off on some other sort of detour. Provided the Tommy didn't make another request, or another half-dozen requests. Provided something else didn't turn up to get in their way, divert them off course, or otherwise conspire to make this trip a misery. It was always this run, always the Enterprise Station to Sagan run.
Valerie pinched the bridge of her nose and slid thumb and forefinger up above her orbital sockets, right along the eyebrow. She could feel the headache coming on already.