Van nodded. He’d never had to worry about the details, not in the RSF.
All told, they spent almost two hours dealing with the various aspects of Van’s new employment. Eri left after a few minutes.
When they finished, Desoll showed Van to one of the two spare staterooms. It was more like a flag cabin on an RSF ship, with a closet and drawers for other clothes, a small built-in console, a double bunk, and a separate if compact fresher. Van hung up his gear, changed from his uniform into one of the green shipsuits, after removing the insignia, then returned to the cockpit. The older pilot was absorbed in something through the shipnet, and Van just slipped into the right seat and waited.
Finally, Desoll turned to Van. “We’ll be calling in, in a while. I’ll also do the comm verbally, although what the Farhkans will get is through the implant, and I’ll have the shipnet translate their replies verbally. Once we’ve got your implant back in shape, on the outbound, you’ll pick it all up. They don’t communicate aurally, the way we do. So they either have to talk to people with implants or use mechanical devices. They don’t like the mechanical speaking devices and avoid them whenever they can.”
“You seem to know a great deal about them.”
“I had to learn. It took a long time.” Desoll fell silent.
“Where are we?”
“A Farhkan system they call Dharel—that’s as close as I can come to their pronunciation. It’s the one nearest to the Coalition-Revenant-Argenti axis.”
Another half hour passed, then Van sensed…something, a hissing over the shipnet was the closest way of describing it.
“That’s them.” Desoll cleared his throat. “Farhka Station Two, this is Coalition ship Elsin, code name Negative Absolute, pilot Desoll, patron Rhule Ghere, inbound for scheduled resupply, cargo pickup, and medical procedures.”
Van could sense that Desoll was doing something, but his implant could only trace a vague sense of the energy flows. Then Desoll turned to Van. “You have to name a patron to dock here. Rhule Ghere is the patron of IIS. So he’s your patron.” Desoll smiled. “He died a century ago, but he’s still our patron. Remember that, Rhule Ghere.”
“Rhule Ghere,” Van repeated, concentrating on the name.
The same faint hissing filled the cockpit area when the response came back. “Ship Elsin, Pilot Desoll, you are cleared for approach and locking. Do you have the beacon?”
“Farhka Station Two, affirmative. We have the beacon. Proceeding as cleared.”
Desoll’s approach and docking were as smooth as his undocking and departure from Sulyn orbit control had been. Except for the shutdown and power transfer procedures, Van could hardly tell when the Elsin was docked.
“Smooth approach,” he offered.
“Thank you. At our ages, though,” Desoll said with a smile, “they ought to be.” He paused. “They’re waiting for us.”
“Ser?” Eri stood in the passageway behind the cockpit.
Desoll turned to the petite tech. “Eri, they should be here with the dispatches, and the cargo, in fifteen minutes. After you’ve got that and onloaded the gear for Commander Albert, you can button up and rest, so long as you’re on the shipnet. We’ve got a few chores to take care of.”
“Yes, ser.”
Desoll nodded to Van. “We might as well get on with it.”
The lock opened as they neared, and there was a puff and a rush of air as the pressures equalized. Van had the feeling that the Farhkans were used to a slightly higher air pressure, and probably meant a higher gee field on their home planet. The sensation that hit Van as they stepped through the lock and into the station corridor beyond was the smell—or scent—a bewildering combination of musk and cleanliness.
Less than five meters down a gray-green corridor stood a Farhkan—the first one Van had ever seen face-to-face, and face-to-face was definitely not the same as a holo view. Holo views didn’t convey either the smell or the strangeness.
The bipedal alien had two arms, and he wore the equivalent of shimmering gray fatigues. Iron gray hair that was more like fur topped the square head, and the red eyes showed no differential between pupil and iris. The flexible nose flapped with every breath, and only had a single nostril. Blunt crystal-like teeth, not quite fangs, but that long, extended beyond the almost lipless mouth.
Van could sense the communications between the Farhkan and Desoll, but only as the faintest hissing through his obviously inadequate comm implant.
“They have the equipment set up,” Desoll said. “This is Dr. Fhale. Again, that’s an approximation.”
Van inclined his head to the alien, who was only slightly taller than he was, but broader. The alien did not seem particularly menacing, but how could one tell?
The alien nodded in return, then turned, as if he expected them to follow.
Van and Desoll did.
“They are a very peaceful species,” Desoll added. “Their last interspecies conflict was before we left Old Earth.”
“Carefully phrased, there,” Van said dryly.
Ahead of them, the alien snorted.
“He’s laughing. They came into contact with the Revenants about four hundred years ago. They suggested to the Revenants that Farhkan systems were not open to Revenant colonization. The Revs disagreed. The Farhkans suggested more strongly. The Revs still disagreed. Before it was all over, they had to destroy a number of Revenant ships before the Revs got the idea. The Farhkans were not happy about it. One told me that it set them back thousands of years.”
What seemed to be a solid wall split into a trapezoidal entry. The two humans followed the Farhkan into a room that was completely empty except for what looked like an operating table tilted at a forty-five-degree angle and shaped into the form of a chair.
“You just sit down there.” Desoll stepped back several paces, watching.
Van eased himself into the chair.
Desoll frowned. “Ah…before we proceed…Dr. Fhale wants to
