“Excellent, Captain Talis. You will find xin to be polite company, I am sure.”
“I look forward to the opportunity to learn more about your people,” she said. This wasn’t actually a lie. It just wasn’t the whole truth, which was that she’d much rather learn it from a book, far away from the aliens themselves. Preferably as they left Peridot and went back home to wherever they came from.
As the alien guides led them back out of the bridge and back to the ramp that would take them home, Talis chided herself for the animosity she was feeling.
The aliens were paying good money to get the last piece of their puzzle. If Talis knew the answers they were after, she would have given them herself and sent them on their way that much faster. But her part was to get them halfway there. She’d taken the job, and she’d certainly taken the money, and now the Yu’Nyun were her partners. Had they been Cutter clients, hosting a representative on their ship would have been a thoroughly reasonable part of the deal.
It seemed to Talis that Sophie was not suffering the same doubts or discomfort after all. She spoke to the alien nonstop as they walked, bubbling over with questions which Talis knew only scratched the surface of what curiosities must be brewing in the girl’s mind.
The alien responded patiently, though from what Talis could hear xe was a bit obtuse in their—xist, was it?—answers. Xist accent—the clicks and hisses around the edges where vowels met consonants—was more obvious when xe spoke at lower volumes.
On the familiar landscape of Wind Sabre’s deck, Dug and Tisker stood waiting for them. Dug’s jaw was set so tight it might take a sally bar to open it. Tisker failed to suppress a quiet exclamation of surprise when the alien ship retracted its ramp and the hatch sealed, leaving the towering slender emissary on their ship.
The sharp point of a tension headache started up in Talis’s right temple. This was not going to make her crewmen think any better of this contract, or her, than they had when the aliens were going to stay on their own ship.
But Sophie had no such issues. She was obviously thrilled with their visitor, and in the presence of her exuberance, it was easy to forget that she and Talis had exchanged those heated words the day before. Sophie made quick introductions, making a far better attempt of the alien’s name than Talis would have managed, and then eagerly led their guest below decks to stow xist equipment and foodstuffs.
Little Sophie, the most sheltered and colony-bred of their group, putting them all to shame with her hospitality.
Was being courteous too much to ask of herself? Talis had, after all, swallowed her feelings for any number of clients before these. Actually accepting the aliens might follow, if she let it.
Chapter 20
Rain splattered on Wind Sabre’s deck. Softly at first, in droplets so occasional that Talis felt like she imagined them. Then gradually, as their ship approached the cumulonimbus giant that blocked the stars like a dark smear, the rain increased in frequency and intensity until she had to pull down her goggles and cinch the hood of her foul weather gear.
The air grew turbulent and the lift balloon bounced against the lines, tiny bursts of slack rope that plunged the deck under her feet before wrenching it back up again. It was a good way to lose one’s last meal.
Ahead, lightning flashes lit the cloud from within, providing strobed details of its size and shape. That information was already on her charts. It was the buoy she was watching for, marking safe entry into the storm.
The water barges that came for the storm’s bounty could not easily maneuver around the active lightning zones. So the safest and most direct channels were indicated with buoy lights from the edges of the storm to the heart of it. The stormwater depot was installed on the islands amid the hardest driving rains, which collected on enormous harvester platforms anchored to the islands with heavy chains.
“Do you think we’ll see any?”
Talis wondered how long Sophie had been talking to her. She had been trapped in her own thoughts, focused on the view, and Sophie had appeared at her side without her realizing it. The engineer’s pale skin was rain-streaked, but rather than sharing in her captain’s misery, Sophie seemed to revel in the downpour. Fat drops of cold water bounced off her bare shoulders. Her tank top and overalls clung to her skin. She wore oilcloth gaiters to keep rain out of her boots and avoid the blisters that wet socks would bring, but the rest of her gear was still stowed in her locker to the fore of the engine house.
The crew had reduced the regulator on the engines, hoisted their storm jib, and secured anything that might come loose in the wind or bounce out of its place below decks. Now they waited, with nothing to do for the moment but let Tisker guide them in. Once they spotted the buoy.
“Any… ?” Talis didn’t take her eyes off the perimeter of the enormous cloud.
“Mermaids, Captain!”
Talis couldn’t suppress a sound of disgust. “Not if I can help it. This will be enough fun without them flopping onto our deck and trying to eat us. There!”
She spotted the flashing yellow light of the buoy’s lensed signal flame, and waved at Tisker to indicate the course adjustment. Wind Sabre shifted under their feet as the triangular sails along the lift envelope caught the wind and the airship angled toward the solitary unmanned beacon.
“I think they’re lovely. In a flesh-eating-monster sort of way.” Her voice was soft, trailing after thoughts that meandered ahead of them into the thick of that storm.
Talis wondered if Sophie was trying to prove she’d put their argument out of her
