Lyro dumps the tools on a bench and hands me a tablet with a cracked screen. “Make a list of everything I tell you.”
I can do that. He moves around the room, naming the damage in terms of the parts required to fix it, and I jot it down as fast as I can, even though I don’t know what most of it is.Three corner-drilled epylium-alloy nav brackets. One safety harness. One roll carbonsilk tape. A nananik-scale wrench. A new comm unit. Alkasallic glue.
It takes a while, and the list ends up having more than thirty items by the time we’re done. “Where are you going to get all this stuff?”
He shrugs. “That’s your job.”
I laugh. Then I realize he’s not kidding. “I don’t have any of these things. I don’t even know what most of them are!”
“You help me, I help you,” he says, expression unfathomable. Then, with each beat of my heart, understanding pounds into me. He’s not going to help with the Turning unless I get these parts for him. This is the debt he’s collecting...and he’s holding himself hostage until I pay up.
“Okay.” I take a deep breath and let it out, staring at the long list of parts and supplies. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Chapter 12
Lyro
Alioth save me, she finally leaves the ship. I could barely breathe, with the sweet perfume of her arousal everywhere. It was a mistake to invite her in.
Thank the goddess the Frathiks don’t have the kind of senses we Irrans do, or I’d have to drag her into another cleansing unit before any of them smelled her.
While I wait for her to return with the needed parts and tools, I clean up the areas I didn’t get to yesterday. I spent too much time looking for any weapons they missed that I didn’t do much more than assess the hull and control system. They only missed one, a long, thin blade I hid inside one of the broken nav panels, just in case they made another sweep.
Lena’s voice outside the ship is distracting. She begs and bargains with the mechanics in the hangar for the things on my list, and I find myself stopping work to listen to their exchanges.
She is giving anything she has, calling in every favor. Blackmailing, borrowing, bullying her way to what she wants. One moment soft and sweet, the next holding a figurative knife to someone’s throat so they’ll give her three nav brackets or a tube of glue. Whatever it takes.
I could fall in love with this female.
I dismiss the thought the moment it hits me, stuff it deep down where I don’t have to acknowledge it. She may be the typeto call her captors friends, but I am not. It is not love if it is forced down my throat by the goddess’s will.
The ship needs me. Frankly, it needs better than me. I learned how do to basic repairs by hanging around the space dock, one of the few places on the Eye both Zomah and my father avoided, but I’ve never tried to fix damage this extensive.
One blade at a time wins a battle, though.
I focus on wires. Checking behind panels for hidden problems. Cutting out melted sections, connecting around the damage or replacing with the supplies I have on hand. Then I work on the ventilation system, patching leaks and straightening ducts. Simple things. Desperate things, because I don’t know how I will be able to get this bird in the sky again.
Anything that isn’t vital to flying or life support, I ignore. I ignore Lena, too, when she returns again and again with arms full of the supplies I requested, dipping in and out of the ship like a mother bird returning to its cliffside nest with grass and grubs for its offspring.
Finally, she brings a smaller load of items and then stays, watching me as I fish though the pile she’s assembled for the tiny screws I need to reattach one of the nav panels. She beams when I locate them, and I can tell she expects praise for collecting what I needed.
I turn my back and give my attention to the repair. She didn’t do this for me. She did it for her precious eggs. Let them praise her.
“I couldn’t get everything,” she finally says. “Still looking for a third bracket. And nobody has a working comm unit.”
Not that they are willing to give to me. I finish the repair and turn back to her. “They lied to you. There were comm units all over this R’Hiza-damned base before they pulled them out. Look down any passageway and there is another unused control room with another hole in the wall. They have them all somewhere.”
“Damn. You’re right.” She visibly sags, her pride of accomplishment slipping away. Why did I insist on taking it from her?
Anger flares in my gut. I didn’t take it from her. I only told her the truth, that her “friends” are liars. They are the ones to blame.
“I will ask my uncle to find one for us. What you’ve collected is sufficient to repay your time debt,” I say stiffly, the closest I can offer to words of comfort.
Her eyes are still fogged with moisture, but a smile plays across her mouth. “Then I guess this is a good time to tell you we need to go to the Turning orientation. We’re a little late, actually.”
I grudgingly stow my tools and follow her to the fur-fucker’s laboratory. The whole place stinks of him, and a dozen beady-eyed heads turn when we enter, along with my uncle’s.
“Hi, everybody,” Lena chirps, flapping both hands like she’s trying to fly away. Some terrakin greeting, because my uncle’s mate does the same thing in return.
