“Yes,” Shank said with caution.
“Then take your brother. You’ll also need one or two more techs, another navigator or two, and at least one trained medical person. You’ll pull from the cousins.”
“What?” Shank almost yelped.
Anpaytoo smiled. “If you’re going to run as a family ship, you’ll have profits to share with them, so I don’t want the SC paying any of these people, but if we have access to SC training, we need to get as many people in there as we can.”
“I’m not stuffing theUnktomifull of cousins.” Shank crossed his arms and lifted his chin defiantly.
“You are taking as many younger crew as you need to fill out your roster, and you will not give the SC their correct names. We’ll have to coach them to avoid medical tests. They have no right to test our people, so if you have Copta and Zeke put their collective foot down, they should be able to prevent that.”
“Mother!”
Anpaytoo stood. “Chankoowashtay, I understand why you want my help, but you’re not a boy or a warrior of my house.” She looked at Allie. “My help now comes with strings.”
“The trade would benefit you,” Allie said.
“Yes, but having crew trained in SC tactics would help more.” She grinned. “In fact, this might turn out very profitable. So, let’s go figure out how to convince the rest of the universe that my son has just started a family of his own.” She clapped her hands together, and Allie definitely got the feeling that the negotiations were over. Luckily, they’d gotten most of what they wanted...and some of what they didn’t.
Epilogue
Copta dropped downonto the couch next to Allie, who was lying down. Even though Allie kept her eyes closed as she tried to fight off a headache, she could feel the cushion tilt, and then Copta lifted her legs and moved them so that Allie’s feet were in her lap. “I think my eyebrows hurt.”
“Your eyebrows?” Allie had her head in Shank’s lap. He ran his fingers through her short hair, and little shivers traveled up and down her exhausted body.
“Yesterday everything except my eyebrows hurt, and today I hurt worse. Therefore, today my eyebrows hurt,” Copta said. Allie grinned. Copta had a strange sense of humor.
“Did you see that shot I made?” Chet asked as he breezed into the common room on theUnktomiwith entirely too much energy. Allie was starting to truly resent anyone under the age of twenty. They recovered from the training so much faster.
“It was good shooting,” Zeke agreed.
Allie didn’t bother opening her eyes. They’d gotten into such a routine that she could picture the room. Ben would sit near Copta, and Becca would follow. Chet would sit either near Kimi or Bitter Lacroix, and then he’d torment one of the women until they retaliated. Jacqs would choose the corner where he only had to be near Zeke. Allie had a lot more respect for Jacqs after seeing him hold his own against Nicve marines in training; however, he was still a porcupine of a man.
Hotah Brenno would perch on the arm of some chair or lean against the wall and watch them. Allie wasn’t sure how he fit into the family structure because he was named after Lacroix’s father, but he was the only one of the cousins who didn’t have the same last name.
Allie would ask, only the last time she’d asked something, she’d gotten a very long explanation about families and tribes and subdivisions within tribes and a long history that traced back to Earth. She was too tired to track that sort of conversation tonight. She’d spent nearly sixteen hours running nav under computer-generated battle conditions while the damn simulator kept shocking her as it pretended to have catastrophic circuit board failures.
