It only took ten minutes for a heavy fist to hammer on my door. Yani stood, as though she’d been prepared to leave anyway.
She cued it to open, and Senaik stood there. He had one hand clamped over an ear, and an expression that fluctuated between rage and agony.
His discomfort satisfied something deep insideme that I didn’t want to examine too closely. I had no issues hating this particular Drake.
“What is that infernal sound?” he demanded.
Yani straightened. “The slipstream drive has a malfunctioning actuator. It gave us some trouble on the last voyage, but I thought I’d fixed the issue. Sometimes it resolves itself.”
“Repair it, this instant.”
“I cannot do that while we are in the slipstream,” Yani stated with an appropriate level of angst. “I’d have to shut down the drive.”
He glared at her. He knew as well as she that shutting down in mid-slipstream could be disastrous and cause a terrible pileup. Even if the authorities managed to get to you in time and tow your vessel, the hassles involved meant heavy fines and exactly the kind of attention we were pretty sure these guys wanted to avoid.
“The drive won’t fail,” Yani continued. “It just makes a helluva noise. I can try to buffer it…”
As Yani had assured me, most Drakes knew nothing about the mechanics of slipstream drives. They relied on Drolgoks for those things.
Senaik glared at her and snarled, “This sound is intolerable. It is even louder in the storage bay. Buffer it, immediately.”
“I will work on it,” Yani promised. She shot me a look as he backed up to let her out the door.
Senaik stared at me, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled. What was it with the inhaling thing?
His eyes narrowed. “How long ago was the serum injected?” he asked me.
I didn’t want to answer. But then another voice did. “Five days ago. She won’t be evaluated for another sixteen days.”
Kurt hovered across the hall. He met my hostile glare with one of his own, and added, “What the fark is going on?” he complained. “That sound is awful.”
Fortunately, Kurt was better at intimidating thieves than he wasat fixing slipstream drives. I gestured down the hall. “There’s hearing protection in the medbay.”
Kurt turned and half bowed to the Drake. “If you come with me, sir, I can get earplugs for both of us.”
The Drake ignored him and continued to stare at me. I had a hard time avoiding his glowing gaze as it moved to my eartag, and then it narrowed. “If I had known your evaluation was not yet completed, I would never have allowed you on this mission.”
I gaped at him, and then glared. “Why would that make any difference?” I asked.
He hesitated. “This mission is not without its risks,” he said. Then he tilted his head. “Perhaps having you here will prove—fruitful.”
The anger that surged through me was welcome. It gave me the courage to glare at him. “I’m a better pilot than anyone I know,” I said. “And where we’re going, you are going to need that.”
“I am a good pilot myself.” The moment he said it, his jaw clenched, as if he hadn’t meant to reveal that.
When he turned away to follow Kurt toward the medbay, my stomach twisted tighter. His assertion proved that they really didn’t need us on this voyage—and now I knew, that if it was left up to them, we wouldn’t be going back to Earth.
Yani had beenright, damn it. We were just scapegoats, set up to take the blame for those Drakes vanishing.
Our plan had swiftly taken on life-or-death implications…
I gave Yani thirty minutes before I joined her in the engine room.
The door was locked, but I had the key code. When I entered, there was no sign of her amid the maze of conduits and machinery. The noise in here was powerful enough to vibrate right through me—I doubt the Drakes could have stood it at all.
Sookie sat on the counter. The hedgegopher seemed oblivious tothe sound—but when I peered closer, I saw that she was wearing a little cap that fit over her pointed ears. She was outfitted in her camera harness, and Yani’s datapad lay beside her.
She sat up on her hind end and chittered at me hopefully. I dug into a pocket and emerged with a gumdrop. Not exactly her usual healthy fare, but she snatched the offering and carried it to the corner to nibble, while I continued on to the supply room door along the back wall.
