Shank reached out and rested his hand against the biometric lock. “For five horrible weeks. I would have given up and asked her to leave, only I was determined to prove my mother was wrong. That didn’t work out the way I’d hoped.” He gave a dramatic sigh. Allie got that. Sometimes it was easier to live with the wrong than it was to admit you screwed up. “However, it doesn’t matter now. Believe it or not, my mother does not hate you. She’s not thrilled, but she wouldn’t space you to make room for more cargo, and that’s saying something.” Shank poked the Reset button next to the reader and rested his hand against it again. The scanner lights flashed.
“So, she likes me enough to avoid murder. Good to know.” The truth of the matter was that Allie doubted Anpaytoo liked her even that much, but she wouldn’t argue.
Shank gave a frustrated growl and poked the controls. “I know you recognize my biosign, you stupid piece of crap.” The words that followed might have been Lakota, but Allie could recognize swearing when she heard it. Eventually Shank sighed. “I’m locked out. I am really trying to not take this personally, but my mother has locked me out of the ship where I grew up.”
“Is this a bad sign?” Allie asked, disquiet making her stomach ache.
“No. It’s my mother making a point.” Shank leaned against the wall and hit the Call button with his elbow and held it down so it would make a continuous squeal on the other side of the blast doors. “So, what would your father think about me?”
“Oh, he’d adore you. He’d look at that grin, and he’d tell you that he trusted you to make me happy,” Allie said. Shank’s smile was downright smug, at least until Allie finished her statement. “And then you’d tell him you’re a pirate, and he’d start twitching, and then you’d say that we were running a pirate ship, and he’d be checking for his gun. By the time you got around to telling him we’re a Security Central ship undercover as a family ship, he’d shoot you.”
“Great. Maybe we can skip that last half.”
“Yeah, we need to stick with your smile. Your smile is a winner.”
Someone cleared his throat loudly. Allie looked over to see Caj standing in the corridor that led out to the station. “Okay, you two are disgustingly in love. And potentially stupid if you’re telling the truth about the SC part.”
“Would it make it better or worse to point out that this is a viable exit strategy, and Anpaytoo’s biggest complaint was a lack of exit strategy?” Allie asked.
Caj gave her a long look that managed to question her sanity without need for any specific words. “So you decided to work for the SC?” he finally asked. “I think we might have different definitions of exit strategy.”
“Caj, this is a good thing,” Shank said, his voice low and quiet. He even took his elbow off the Call button.
“A good thing? Is it a good thing the way that you going off to a wasichu school was a good thing? I have to tell you, the rest of us are still getting ulcers over that one.” Caj muttered a few Lakota curses of his own. Allie thought she was starting to recognize a few of the common phrases.
“You and I both know that they’re far more sane than Command.”
“Your Uncle Cloud who talks to the ghosts in the walls is more sane than Command,” Caj snapped. Then he took several deep breaths as he obviously tried to get control of his temper.
Shank’s lips twisted into a wry grin. “There is that.”
Caj glared, but a minute into it, he seemed to run out of steam. With a shake of his head, he went to the entry hatch and put his own hand on the biolock. “Yeah, there is. Well, I’m not the one whose blessing you need, little idiot. Your mother is taking the antacids now, so she should be ready to talk to you.” Caj tapped his comm.
“We should be the ones taking medicine,” Allie complained.
“Well try to avoid giving Paya any more gray hair, and don’t tell her about the SC stuff unless I’m there. I want to see her face.”
“We could let you tell her,” Shank offered. He sounded downright cheerful about the possibility.
The lock opened under Caj’s hand, and he gestured them into the short passage that led to the ship herself. “I’m not suicidal; no matter how many times Paya has accused me of that very thing. You got yourself into the trouble, and you can talk to her.” Caj waited until the door closed, and then he turned to them with a far more serious expression on his face. “Are you here for a rescue from the SC?”
Shank glanced over toward Allie, giving her one last chance to back out of the devil’s bargain they’d made. The problem was that Allie didn’t want to, and she knew Zeke liked the deal, and Ben had said he liked working for the SC before the mission with the ambassador had gone wrong. That meant most of the crew wanted this, and the rest of the crew was stupid enough in love to go along.
“Actually, no,” Allie told Caj. “They’re offering us a pretty good deal, especially since we both got irradiated during the fighting. We need medical attention that only Earth and the SC have.”
“Woh shee lee yah glay. I didn’t know. Shank...” Caj grimaced as he looked at Shank. Allie understood. These people had been driven out of Earth space because they wanted to keep their heritage alive, even if it meant being charged with eugenics, and now Shank didn’t dare father any children at all unless he could get his genes fixed. Radiation could do terrible things to a person’s reproductive organs, and with both of them carrying genetic damage, the odds were that any children they conceived would be damaged.
“The SC promised to fix the problem,” Shank said, “which seems fair because they’re the reason we got irradiated. Word to the wise, don’t get in the middle of an SC mission.”
Caj rolled his eyes and then headed for the ship. “You might be shocked to hear this, but I already knew that.”
Allie cringed. What they were asking of Caj and Anpaytoo with the Eclipse mining base trade was a whole lot like getting into the middle of an SC mission, but if they wouldn’t agree to ferrying goods for the miners, Allie wasn’t sure what Zeke would do. He refused to walk away without finding some way of making the miners’ lives better.
They reached a lift, and Shank threaded his fingers between hers, holding her hand tightly. She gave him a wan smile. Maybe he was worried she wouldn’t play nice with Anpaytoo, but she understood how much they had riding on this. Allie wished Zeke had come, although back at theUnktomi, she had actually agreed that she and Shank had the best chance of making this part work. They needed this.
When the miners had found out that the refugee camps had no work, almost all of them had agreed it was better to keep working and send money home to get their families out of the camps faster; however, Allie figured the miners had a pretty damn big problem if Anpaytoo refused, because no one else would ferry any extra ore off planet. Not even the SC would take that sort of risk, and Commander Jasper had been very clear about that. As a representative of Earth government, their screwups would impact the treaty. Only family ships or other pirates would be immune from that since they were the one human faction the bats recognized as separate.
And now that the miners knew the conditions in the camps, they were all on the verge of rioting, and Allie didn’t figure the bats would have a whole lot of patience for rioting slaves. Or maybe they would. Shank insisted that family was a huge deal for them. Still, a lot was riding on Anpaytoo’s cooperation. If she refused to help, most of the family ships would follow her lead.
