CHAPTER 1
The parts were late.Again.
Fee looked over the manifest, and then back to the captain of the freighter which had just flown up from Balco.
He shuffled a little in place.
“Why did you even bother coming up with so little of the order available?” she asked, keeping her tone polite.
She was being disingenuous—she knew exactly why he’d bothered.
Captain Silco cleared his throat. “They’re having issues with getting the materials they need,” he said. “That’s all I’ve been told. But I have standing orders to bring up everything that’s available so there’s as little delay as possible, no matter how small the load.”
“Well.” Fee stared at him for a beat. “I certainly appreciate that. And I’m sure Eazi and Paxe do, too.”
She was so insincere, Captain Silco took a step back.
“I need to get on,” he said, nodding, and then turned and strode away.
She watched him go, then allowed her gaze to move to the partially-built shell of Paxe’s Class 5, sitting one docking arm over, a low nest-shaped structure.
“He’s frightened of us,” Eazi said into Fee’s ear. “Which proves he’s not a stupid man.”
“No.” She watched Silco disappear into his ship. “It makes this very unamusing game they’re playing with us all the more inexplicable. The deal was made, all parties seemed in agreement—happy even. But then, this.”
Thisbeing constant delays, mix-ups, incorrectly calibrated parts.
Things like this had happened before, when rebuilding the Grihan military headquarters on the way station. Balco had made things difficult—delaying shipments, forgetting vital parts, all in retribution for Paxe damaging Larga Ways, but she and Eazi had been able to make things just as difficult for the Balcoans, and then Paxe and Balco had signed a formal peace agreement and the issues had gone away.
She needed to find out why they’d come back.
“We can’t let this go on,” Eazi said, echoing her thoughts.
“No. We have to do something about it, or we not only cede some of our authority, but we allow someone else to set the timing for Paxe’s rebuild.”
“Can we get what we need from elsewhere?” Paxe spoke up for the first time. “Order it from the Grih?”
Fee had already thought about that. “We could. It will take time, and given the custom items we need, we’ll have to go over all our requirements again with new suppliers. While Ellie is away with Renn on a visit to Xal, I thought of maybe asking them to approach a few suppliers for us out there, and it may be quicker in the long term to do that, but the best solution would be to find out what’s actually behind these delays and sort it out.”
She almost . . . almost, wanted to say to hell with the Balcoans and go through the Grih anyway, but shedidrun the way station that orbited Balco, and shehadousted the Balcoan governmentfrom any control they had over it. It sucked, but it was in her and Eazi’s best interests to keep up cordial relations with their neighbors.
“How do we do that?” Eazi asked. “I’ve been listening to any and all chatter on the way station, spying on the ships that come up, and while it’s clear the freighter captains know they aren’t fulfilling the orders, they’re just the couriers. They really don’t seem to know the reasons.”
“What about listening to what’s going on down below?” Paxe asked.
He was as capable as Eazi of doing it, but Fee knew his focus was on rebuilding his Class 5 ship.
“I’ve added two more satellites to the three I already had orbiting Balco,” Eazi admitted. “But so far I haven’t picked up anything that would explain the delays.”
“Given the non-answers I get when I speak with Arn Visaffi, I’m going to have to go all the way to the top and sit down with Hi-Lan Baruke.” The Balcoan leader was ambivalent toward her, Fee knew. To say the least.
She and Eazi had taken over the way station the Balcoans had considered theirs, and kicked him out of the lodgings he used when he was up on Larga Ways. But she and Eazi had also saved the way station from catastrophic failure, and between them had brought about so much efficiency to its running, it was generating 30% more revenue than before.
“His schedule says he’s not due up here for three more weeks,” Eazi said, after a pause.
“That’s too long. And only face-to-face will do.” Fee looked toward the planet below. She had been down to Balco only once before. She’d been dropped into the desert to save Eazi’s Class 5 ship from being destroyed.
She had failed in that mission, although Eazi had so far not been unhappy inhabiting Larga Ways instead of his old battleship.
