Jedao wondered if he’d ever get the Patterner back if he took her up on the offer. It hadn’t come cheap. “That’s kind of you, but I’ll have the station store it for me. By the way, what happened to Carp 5 and 6?”
“Beats me,” Haval said. “Before my time. The Gwa-an authorities have never hassled us about it. They’re already used to, paraphrase, ‘odd heptarchate numerological superstitions.’” She eyed Jedao critically, which made her look squintier. “Begging your pardon, but do you have undercover experience?”
What a refreshing question. Everyone knew the Shuos for their spies, saboteurs, and assassins, even though the analysts, administrators, and cryptologists did most of the real work. (One of his instructors had explained that “You will spend hours in front of a terminal developing posture problems” was far less effective at recruiting potential cadets than “Join the Shuos for an exciting future as a secret agent, assuming your classmates don’t kill you before you graduate.”) Most people who met Jedao assumed he’d killed an improbable number of people as Shuos infantry. Never mind that he’d been responsible for far more deaths since joining the regular military.
“You’d be surprised at the things I know how to do,” Jedao said.
“Well, I hope you’re good with cover identities,” Haval said. “No offense, but you have a distinctive name.”
That was a tactful way of saying that the Kel didn’t tolerate many Shuos line officers; most Shuos seconded to the Kel worked in Intelligence. Jedao had a reputation for, as one of his former aides had put it, being expendable enough to send into no-win situations but too stubborn to die. Jedao smiled at Haval and said, “I have a good memory.”
The rest of his crew also had civilian cover names. A tall, muscular man strolled up to them. Jedao surreptitiously admired him. The gold-mesh tattoo over the right side of his face contrasted handsomely with his dark skin. Too bad he was almost certainly Kel and therefore off-limits.
“This is Rhi Teshet,” Haval said. “When he isn’t watching horrible melodramas—”
“You have no sense of culture,” Teshet said.
“—he’s the lieutenant colonel in charge of our infantry.”
Damn. Definitely Kel, then, and in his chain of command, at that. “A pleasure, Colonel,” Jedao said.
Teshet’s returning smile was slow and wicked and completely unprofessional. “Get out of the habit of using ranks,” he said. “Just Teshet, please. I hear you like whiskey?”
Off-limits, Jedao reminded himself, despite the quickening of his pulse. Best to be direct. “I’d rather not get you in trouble.”
Haval was looking to the side with a where-have-I-seen-this-dance-before expression. Teshet laughed. “The fastest way to get us caught is to behave like you have the Kel code of conduct tattooed across your forehead. Whereas no one will suspect you of being a hotshot commander if you’re sleeping with one of your crew.”
“I don’t fuck people deadlier than I am, sorry,” Jedao said demurely.
“Wrong answer,” Haval said, still not looking at either of them. “Now he’s going to think of you as a challenge.”
“Also, I know your reputation,” Teshet said to Jedao. “Your kill count has got to be higher than mine by an order of magnitude.”
Jedao ignored that. “How often do you make trade runs into the Gwa Reality?”
“Two or three times a year,” Haval said. “The majority of the runs are to maintain the fiction. The question is, do you have a plan?”
He didn’t blame her for her skepticism. “Tell me again how much cargo space we have.”
Haval told him.
“We sometimes take approved cultural goods,” Teshet said, “in a data storage format negotiated during the Second Treaty of—”
“Don’t bore him,” Haval said. “The ‘trade’ is our job. He’s just here for the explode-y bits.”
“No, I’m interested,” Jedao said. “The Second Treaty of Mwe Enh, am I right?”
Haval blinked. “You have remarkably good pronunciation. Most people can’t manage the tones. Do you speak Tlen Gwa?”
“Regrettably not. I’m only fluent in four languages, and that’s not one of them.” Of the four, Shparoi was only spoken on his birth planet, making it useless for career purposes.
“If you have some Shuos notion of sneaking in a virus amid all the lectures on flower-arranging and the dueling tournament videos and the plays, forget it,” Teshet said. “Their operating systems are so different from ours that you’d have better luck getting a magpie and a turnip to have a baby.”
“Oh, not at all,” Jedao said. “How odd would it look if you brought in a shipment of goose fat?”
Haval’s mouth opened, closed.
Teshet said, “Excuse me?”
“Not literally goose fat,” Jedao conceded. “I don’t have enough for that and I don’t imagine the novelty would enable you to run a sufficient profit. I assume you have to at least appear to be trying to make a profit.”
“They like real profits even better,” Haval said.
Diverted, Teshet said, “You have goose fat? Whatever for?”
“Long story,” Jedao said. “But instead of goose fat, I’d like to run some of that variable-coefficient lubricant.”
Haval rubbed her chin. “I don’t think you could get approval to trade the formula or the associated manufacturing processes.”
“Not that,” Jedao said. “Actual canisters of lubricant. Is there someone in the Gwa Reality on the way to our luckless Shuos friend who might be willing to pay for it?”
Haval and Teshet exchanged baffled glances. Jedao could tell what they were thinking: Are we the victims of some weird bet our commander has going on the side? “There’s no need to get creative,” Haval said in a commendably diplomatic voice. “Cultural goods are quite reliable.”
You think this is creativity, Jedao thought. “It’s not that. Two battles ago, my fangmoth was almost blown in two because our antimissile defenses glitched. If we hadn’t used the lubricant as a stopgap sealant, we wouldn’t have made it.” That much was even true. “If you can’t offload all of it, I’ll find another use for it.”
“You do know you can’t cook with lubricant?” Teshet said. “Although I wonder if it’s good for—”
Haval stomped on his toe. “You already have plenty
