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"What think?" Saura asked after several seconds passed and nothing moved or shot back at us. "Good to go?"
I nodded.
She tipped a gloved forefinger forward and with thoughts of the flitting ghost from the outer system on both our minds we advanced outward to take shelter behind one of the shipping containers, our weapons raised and ready.
When I looked back toward the vestibule, I saw a gigantic symbol painted on the wall of Idwal's inner core.
"What's that say?" I asked.
"Is Proambu equivalent for number five."
"Do they use the same number system as everyone else?" Everyone else, for me, being Human and Tabi.
"Yes."
"Crap. This must be Section Five." The message she had received gave our new cargo location as Section Ten, halfway around the enormous ring.
"Is no way to get there without walking distance." Saura shrugged. "Only two falls from upper level. Since top bay much larger, would require longer walk to cross over to fall in Section One."
"Maybe we can cut through the core," I suggested hopefully. Security in Human and Tabi space severely restricted access to their stations' central cores, which held administrative centers, critical mechanicals, and residential living facilities. No one wanted scumbag spacers prowling the housing blocks, and even scumbag spacers didn't want crazies accessing air and water processing facilities. Station residents had chip implants and passed eye scans to enter the core. Security escorted non-residents with business inside. Who knew what Proambu protocols were, however? "Did they supply you with a key code?"
"No."
Sometimes valuable intelligence only emerges in a need-to-know situation, so we located the nearest corridor and followed it inward to Idwal's core, to an imposing doorway with all sorts of Proambu glyphs posted on the walls surrounding it and a keypad located slightly above what I would consider a normally comfortable height.
Saura shook her head. "No code comes and cannot read these."
That ended our shortcut. I sighed. "I hope this doesn't involve carrying heavy objects back to the ship."
"Can take cargo up fall in Section One and find loader to move across upper bay. Can read enough basic symbols on panels to get that far."
That would take more time than I was comfortable with out here. "I wonder why they sent us down here to pick up something they could have left in the cargo area."
"Perhaps thought easily missed there."
Perhaps. There was a lot of stuff in the vast upper area. But there were also ways to tag even the smallest item for the intended recipient to find. The jellyfish and the Frairy were putting us through extra work and I appreciated Saurubi's calm acceptance of the situation. Despite their fiery nature, Tabisee could be remarkably calm, patient creatures—until they decided it was time to act on something. Then they became a ruthless and deadly force that was nearly impossible to stop. I, on the other hand, was merely Human: curious, impatient, suspicious by nature, grumpy, unreasonable, and headstrong. I was damned lucky my partner possessed the more stellar traits.
I shifted my attention to the readouts from my suit's environmental sensors that ran in my perivision and my disposition improved a few shades. "Hey, air down here is acceptable for Human/Tabisee consumption." I shut down the commlink before she had time to protest and pulled the press seals on my suit.
Her chest rose and fell in an exaggerated sigh of despair when I removed my headgear.
I sniffed. "The air has a metallic stink."
When I did not turn purple and fall to the floor, gasping, she removed hers. "No one make you remove physio-vital part of suit," she said tartly as she flicked her ears to fluff helmet-flattened fur.
"It's a long walk. We may as well be comfortable."
We struck out again, staying close to the inside curve of the core to shave distance. Occasionally we moved through an obstacle course of odd fixtures that must have been necessary to Proambu life.
During one clear stretch, I glanced across the ring at the massive bank of pressure glass curving up and over our heads to the outer wall of the core.
That was some impressive engineering.
On Human stations, the outer ring walls are solid material. The best viewport I've ever seen on an EA station was a series of three windows six meters in height and maybe a meter-and-a-half in width sitting side by side. The vista they offered made them a big attraction to people on that station, including spacers.
We spacers are familiar with the view outside our ships—sometimes we work in space for hours—but to see it through something larger than the faceplate of a spacesuit is still enticing.
The sight of the Vasty and the stars around Idwal's system, however, made my gut twist. What sorts of thoughts ran through the minds of beings who crushed planets and who stared out with bold eyes into the vastness of the stars for leisure?
Refocusing back on my immediate surroundings, I threaded my way through another cluster of tables and chairs that might have been part of a café or bar. It seemed the former residents actually gathered for social activities, though the chairs, doors and all the equipment were larger than Human-scale.
Nothing eased my tension about being out here, seeing these things firsthand. "We must have been out of our minds accepting this job."
"Did not have choice," Saura reminded me.
"I should never have gone with that Frairy."
She frowned. "Then where would be? Stranded on Mandragala Station, struggling to survive? Thief's Hand is ours, and we are getting paid."
"True," I acknowledged. "But, the way we got to that isn't right, Saura."
She smiled, her sharp incisors glinting in the low light, but her eyes were hard. I suspected she felt the same way as me. "Too late back out now."
"Yeah." It had been too late to back out by the time I regained my senses after the Jillie D crew's beating. My gaze drifted to the outer wall again. The gas giant was creeping into view on the left from behind the massive strip of reinforced wall that set this section off from the next one. The small moon would soon follow it. Horizontal moonrise here would be interesting.
"Odd they left that little moon," I commented.
"Hand's sensors picked up presence of small structures out there. Maybe left additional support base for refueling ships," she told me.
"I wonder if the Endar use the platform."
Her ears suddenly went up.
"What?" My heart thumped. Damn, I hated being out here!
"Activity," she said. "Station sensors show small ship has emerged from behind moon. Must have hidden in clutter."
My mind flashed to the trace of weapon fire the Hand had picked up as we came in. "Unfriendly?" Pirates hanging around to pick off ships that dropped in to harvest fuel would be stupid to hazard entry into this platform's defense field. We'd required pass codes to avoid destruction.
"Station defense is not arming," she observed.
That made things even more confusing. "The Hand's not picking up anything unusu—oh shit! The ship's sensors just twitched to some activity on the system rim." A trap? "Saura, the ghost you thought you saw..."
"Perhaps not glitch, Vivi. Station sees, too." She pulled a 3-D display of Idwal's system up in the air in front of us, her fingers flicking as lines flowed outward across it. One stopped short, beside a red dot, flagging the location of the newly emerged ship out at the gas giant's moon. The other continued in an agonizingly slow arc, marking the distance to the edge of the system, to what might be our ghost. It finally stopped in the heliosphere and held a steady glow.
"It's not going away this time," I said tightly.
"No," she agreed. "Vivi, bad situation may be developing. Should get to Section Ten very fast. Must retrieve what is there and leave."
The lighter gravity made the run easy, but we were both breathing hard when we plunged across the three-meter wide tracks of the massive security doors that separated Section Nine from Section Ten. We stopped just inside to catch our breath and scope the area. There were a few flat carts scattered around and rows of seating out near the edge, similar to the boarding areas in a Human spaceport.
A sound that I had taken for a local background noise in this new section finally drew my attention. The series of hisses, clicks, and musical notes seemed to repeat in a pattern.
"Proambu," Saurubi said. "Is countdown for arriving ship."
"Are you serious?" A countdown meant the ship had approach codes. Could it be our cargo, arriving late? Or was the ship returning to Idwal for some other reason? Did they think to reclaim their cargo and take ours, too? "How long until it gets here?"
"Approximate one hour EA time."
Long enough to find our stuff, haul it to the ship, and get out. Barely.
"What are we looking for, Saura?" I asked, hoping this time the answer would be different.
"Pick up cargo in Section Ten. Further instructions await on return to ship."
The same. "This pretense to a scavenger hunt is wearing thin." I glanced around the huge, sparsely furnished area. "It can't be a hold-filling cargo if we need to move it from down here. Let's find it and go."
We searched the area around the airlock first, looking for a crate or box. Something out of place, clearly left for us. When we failed to turn up anything, we moved inward, Saurubi checking closer to the core while I examined the outer area.
"Nothing," I called out. "You?"
"No. Appears incoming ship may contain cargo."
I knew neither of us were comfortable with that.
Should we stay and meet our possible connection, or retreat to the Thief's Hand and wait until they finished their business and left Idwal? The deep dark brought out a dangerous crazy in some people and we had no idea what crewed the approaching vessel. Thoughts of an encounter with reivers or pirates sent chill running over me.
I'd learned a long time ago that it was better to err on the side of caution.
Saura's eyes drifted left, toward Section One and I knew she was thinking the same thing.
"Let's go." I started back across toward her.
Before I'd taken three steps, the tone of the Proambu message changed.
Urgency has a universal tone.
Through the glass around the airlock, I saw a movement. The mechanical umbilical for passenger debarkation had started a slow extension out into space. It telescoped, pushing out segments behind a chunky cup-shape on its far end that housed magnets to clamp on and seal it to a ship. Inside the transparent tube I could see red lights coruscating outward along its length.
"Did that ship activate it?" I yelled.
"Must assume has access code, same as Hand."
Which meant they actually could be our contact.
And they were hiding behind the moon, with a ghost in the outer system and traces of weapon fire in between, raising the odds they were in trouble. I swore. How much were we obligated to help them? EA law was all over the board on that. We had not signed up for a fight.
The lights at the corners of the airlock blazed white and a square of green light pulsed on a panel to the right of it. The umbilical had fully extended. The red lights outside changed to yellow and switched direction, flowing back toward the airlock.
The tone of the Proambu message changed again.
"Is safety warning," Saura called. "Ship is coming in too fast."
I finally made my way back across the ring to her. "It's almost here?" I panted. Nowhere near an hour had passed. Someone was rushing to get here. "What's the status of the ghost?"
She frowned as she tried to make sense of the alien communications that must be bombarding her.
Her eyes widened.
Only something extreme could put a stricken expression like that on my partner's face.