“You need some help? I can get Yates up here.”
“No, that’s okay.” She glanced towards the hall behind me, then lowered her voice. “Between you and me, he’d only slow things down.”
“Oh?” I had thought that Yates knew his stuff. He’d been a data jockey for a long time and everyone at Beck Salvage seemed to have a high opinion of him.
“He’s kind of old school,” Chiraine said. “Not that his approach is wrong or anything. It’s just that we use more imperative slicing these days. I get the impression that Yates is more of a field operator.”
I shrugged diplomatically, and didn’t respond.
“Anyway,” she said. “I better get back to it.”
“Hang in there. And let me know if you need anything. Better yet, try to get some sleep.”
“Sleep?” She smiled at me. “What’s that?”
The next morning, I woke up early and checked on Ana-Zhi. She was sleeping like the dead on one of the flight seats in the main hold. I let her sleep and went to see how Chiraine was doing.
I found her also asleep, slumped over her workstation—just where I had left her six hours before.
Great.
I didn’t disturb her. Instead I headed to the bridge. Hap Galish was dozing in the pilot’s chair. Was the whole crew asleep?
“You didn’t sleep there all night, did you?”
He started awake. “No. Just needed to run some diagnostics.”
“Good. Let’s get out of here,” I said.
“Oh yeah? Where to?” He sat up and flicked some switches on the console.
“Any place but here.”
“Did the professor finish crunching the data?”
“Not sure, but I doubt it. I don’t think we should hang around here. Maybe just return to Yueld’s orbit, okay?”
He hesitated.
“What?” I asked.
“You run this by Ana-Zhi?”
I felt my blood begin to simmer. Not quite a boil, but I was getting there.
“She’s sleeping. Now just get us moving.”
There was something in my tone that convinced Galish, but before he was even able to start up the thrusters, the proximity alarms started sounding.
What the hell?
“Looks like we’ve got company.” Galish pointed at the bridge’s main display screen.
It showed a Lamprey-class ship coming towards us. From its crimson color, sharp angles and distinctive bat-like stabilizers, I recognized it immediately.
“The Mayir,” I said. “What the hell are they up to?”
“Nothing good, I’m sure.” He engaged our defensive systems and broadcast an alert to the crew.
“You still want me to get out of here?” Galish asked.
“What’s standard procedure for a situation like this?”
He snorted. “Standard procedure is to let the real captain deal with it.”
That was bullshit, but he was right. Beyond some theoretical knowledge that had been implanted in me, I had no clue what to do when a potentially hostile competitor got in your face without warning.
The Mayir ship landed a hundred meters away and just sat there. It didn’t try to hail us or anything.
“What the hell is going on now?” Ana-Zhi stormed onto the bridge. “I was trying to get some shut-eye.” She glared at me sitting in the captain’s chair. “You mind?”
As we exchanged positions, I caught a strong whiff of whiskey. It appeared that my first mate had been self-medicating with a little contraband alcohol. I didn’t really give a crap one way or the other, but I needed her to be sharp and to deal with this.
“They just plopped down about four minutes ago,” Galish said. “Just parked there.”
“Arrogant pricks,” she muttered, leaning back into the chair I had just vacated.
Then I remembered something. Yesterday, when Hap Galish had mentioned that both the Mayir and the Faiurae were also here to find the Kryrk, I was taken by surprise. Then when I tried to recall the mission’s competitive analysis, I came up blank. It was like there had been a glitch in my AL procedure.
I had asked Ana-Zhi to fill me in on the briefing, but she put me off because we were about to try to get into Roan Andessa.
But now was as good a time as any. I needed to know what we were up against.
“Brief me on the Mayir,” I said.
“Piss off.” She shut her eyes and leaned even further back in the chair. “Hap, let me know if they make a move.”
“I’m serious,” I said. “I need to know why they want the Kryrk.”
“Gods,” she said, eyes still closed.
“What?”
“It always comes down to gods. My gods are better than yours. I’m right and you’re wrong. You don’t deserve to live. Blah, blah, blah. The opiate of the masses.”
I turned to Galish. “What is she saying?”
“It’s a religious conflict. They hate each other. And both sides believe that the Kryrk will give them legitimacy. The Scepter of the Gods.”
“I thought it was supposed to be the Crescent of the Stars.”
“I was speaking metaphorically, dumbass.”
I stared at the screen, watching the Mayir’s crimson ship. I guessed what Ana-Zhi and Galish were telling me made sense. But that didn’t explain the Faiurae’s interest in the Kryrk. I asked Galish about it.
“Did you bump your head or something? The Faiurae want the Kryrk because they know it’s extremely valuable to both the Shima and the Mayir. They’ll play one off the other.”
“Mercenary bastards,” Ana-Zhi commented. Her eyes were still closed.
“I still don’t get why the Mayir are here, though,” I said. “Shouldn’t they be off looking for the Kryrk? Chasing down their own clues?”
“Maybe they hit a dead end,” Galish said. “Kind of like us.”
“What? So they’re tracking down that broken node too? Are they going to go down into the zoo?”
“That, I’d like to see,” Ana-Zhi said.
At that moment, the bridge comm unit came to life. “Hello? Anyone home over there?”
The voice was deep and resonant, but it had a mocking tone to it.
“Son of a bitch,” Ana-Zhi said, sitting up. “No way.”
“Come in, Freya. We’re not interrupting your breakfast, are we?”
“Who is that?” I asked Ana-Zhi.
She punched a button to open the frequency and said, “The biggest asshole in the universe: Agon Qualt.”
The voice bellowed in laughter. “Guilty as charged. Is that the dulcet tones
