Niko meant to go find Talon but paused in her office, or what she considered her office. She had managed to convert a small room that Arpat Takraven had never used—she thought it might have been a guest bedroom at one point, but hadn’t bothered to inquire too far into its antecedents—into what was pretty much a replica of her space back at the restaurant, complete with desk, and ordnance rack, and wall of notes, this time not just menus and recipes but trade notes and maps as well.
She had omitted some of the touches that had marked the Last Chance’s space back at TwiceFar Station. For one thing, it smelled of the Thing rather than cooking or cleaning, which was infinitely preferable.
The room did have plenty of cupboards, much like the former closet it emulated, and a rack with Niko’s current uniform of sorts, a Free Trader’s long, sweeping coat (purple in her case) with the Thing’s ornate logo sewn on the breast, hanging ready for formal trading occasions.
“Captain,” the ship said.
“Thing,” Niko said warily, having learned to distinguish the tone that marked one of the ship’s attempts to understand all the ramifications of having a conscious mind. “Is this possibly something you should be talking to Dabry about? I am extremely busy conducting research in preparation for our arrival at Montmurray Station.”
“You appear to be researching a cooking catalog,” the ship said.
“That is an invasion of my privacy, for one,” said Niko, “and for another, I am indeed allowing myself to look idly through such things while I ponder deeply on the question of how we are most likely to track Petalia.”
To the ship, that did not seem to be a very complicated question. “Surely it is only a matter of examining the manifests of the various outgoing vessels,” it pointed out.
Niko shook her head. “No, it’s considerably more complicated than that. They won’t have embarked under their real name. They won’t have wanted to be traced by anyone.”
“So perhaps you should eliminate all of the people that are real,” the ship said.
“How would you go about doing that?” Niko asked, intrigued.
“I would query the Known Universe databanks for their history. If they did not have a history, then I would know that was not a real identity.” The ship felt smug.
“It is certainly an interesting definition,” Niko said. “So for you, anyone who has a history is automatically on the level?”
“I do not understand.”
“Okay, my apologies for using idioms and physical metaphor,” Niko said. She paused and thought before trying another approach. “Do you understand the concept of fraudulence?”
The ship considered this question, then matched it up against the earlier conversation. “But why would they use an identity intended to commit crime?”
“A fraudulent identity is a crime in and of itself,” Niko said. “Or usually is, at any rate, depending on what legal system you’re working with. The degree to which it’s illegal will differ according to that system as well. It is mildly illegal in the Known Universe overall and most space stations stick to those rules, although some have their own. TwiceFar, for example, was notorious for not caring.”
The ship processed all of this. “These are not things that Arpat Takraven explored often,” it said.
“I’m not surprised,” Niko said. “When you’re rich, you don’t need to resort to that sort of thing. You can just buy your way out of any situation.” She stopped herself. “Although it is very kind of Arpat Takraven to allow us and you to journey together.”
She didn’t add what she was thinking. What she always thought when reminded of the situation. She was sure that the ultrarich had some ulterior motive. He had told her he only asked that she and the others prepare a meal for him every once in a while and relate their latest adventures, but she was sure it was more complicated than that. It had to be.
The ship said, “So the being known as Petalia will have obtained a false identity and they will have used it to embark outward. That still presents us with a limited set of possibilities.”
“It’s been a good two months since we dropped them off,” Niko pointed out. “In that time, a reasonably fast ship could have stopped at literally a dozen stations—”
“That is unlikely.”
“—But possible, you will admit.”
“But we will begin with that list of possibilities, nonetheless. And that is something that could be obtained while not on the station. But you insist that you, as well as some of the others, must go aboard the station in order to speak to people about any traces of her presence that she may have left behind, despite the danger lurking there.”
“That is correct,” Niko said. “But this is not so we can add any other items to our work list. What it does is allow us to eliminate the possibility that they simply stayed on board the station. The point is information that helps us winnow through that list and make it smaller by eliminating those that are impossible or unlikely.”
She abandoned the cooking catalog entirely, setting it aside, and went on. “Some are already less likely than others, such as vessels upon which they would be physically or otherwise uncomfortable, perhaps for reasons of high gravity or a particular atmosphere. But because they are working to throw everyone in the Known Universe off their trail, nothing can be eliminated without investigation.”
“I understand more fully now,” the ship said. “But I still do not understand why we are pursuing this being in the first place. They declared on multiple occasions, Captain, that they wanted nothing more to do with you or anyone aboard the ship. I can play back any number of recordings of them saying so.”
“Please refrain from doing so,” Niko said, holding up a hand to forestall it. “Yes, I am well aware that they do not wish any help, but I am also aware that they may need it.”
“I am confused how this intersects with the question of consent,” the ship said.
Niko knuckled her forehead. “I really do think this is something you should talk about with the sergeant,” she said.
“When I attempted to open the topic with the sergeant, he said that you were much better suited for it.”
“Really? How exactly did he phrase that?”
“He said that you understood questions of protocol as well as exactly why you were expending energy on a fruitless chase.”
“Well,” Niko said, “that’s certainly one particular spin on it.”
She cast about for ways to divert the ship. Arguing with a pedantic and sometimes over-literal bioship about questions of etiquette was not how she preferred to spend her days, and the ship had a habit of continuing the conversation on and on until told to drop it.
“We know that the pirate king Tubal Last is alive and bent on revenge. While we’re the most obvious targets for that revenge, others will be trying to fill the power gap created by his absence. He’ll have to deal with that mob as well and I am not sure which he would intend to move against first. We must not let him simply chase us around the Known Universe, looking over our shoulders and being afraid. No, we need to find out where his new base is, and we need to take the fight to him somehow.”
“How will we do that?” The ship felt a surge of pride at the invocation of the word we. It had never been part of a we before, at least not as it understood such things.
“I haven’t the faintest,” Niko admitted. “But if we push forward, we continue along the Golden Path, Lassite tells me, and I believe an integral part of that part is that we remain alive despite Last’s best attempts to the contrary.” She broke off.
A pad of footsteps was coming down the hallway, a pad she hadn’t heard for far, far too long.
Now here was Talon in the doorway. That was encouraging, at least, for all that his hair was matted and he smelled stale and musty.
“We need to go and find the other bioships,” he said. “The ones that were the ship’s siblings.”
“Perhaps at some point,” she said. “But you missed our conference. We need to find out what Tubal Last is planning. That’s our first priority.”
“But we don’t know where he is! We might as well go try to find them.”
She considered him. “How would you go about doing that?”
He had actually put thought into it and had a plan. “We go to the shipyards where they were grown and get at their records.”
“A world of dubious action seems to be encompassed in the phrase ‘and get at,’” she observed. She didn’t want to discourage him, so she was trying to be tactful. “Anyway, we have a course of action. We will go and find Petalia, and they may be able to give us information that we can use.”
“Petalia hates you.”
He wouldn’t have been so blunt, wouldn’t have used the words to strike at her like that, but the anger that moved him around like a puppet made his jaws act now. An almost imperceptible flinch rewarded him, but more than that, her scent changed, filled with emotion and complexity in a way that was not Niko and yet more than Niko.
He hadn’t made her angry, though, just sad, and that made him feel ashamed of his words. She was so much better than he was at not being angry.
“They do hate me,” she said evenly. “But they also have very good reason to want Tubal Last destroyed. He is not a man to let his possessions go wandering about without him, and he considers Petalia one of those possessions.”
Talon searched his mind for words, trying to assemble the argument that would win what he wanted. It seemed vital now that the ship be reunited with its siblings. How could Niko not see that, how could she not be springing into immediate action?
But she shook her head at him.
“I need to go speak with Dabry,” she said and stood, pushing herself away from the desk. She patted his shoulder as she exited, a gentle reassurance that he refused to acknowledge. Then he was left to himself. His whiskers twitched and he gave way to the temptation of instinct and let himself crouch on the floor in the form of a lion simply so he could lash his tail back and forth, each thump against the wall of the ship like a blow, and growled out his anger and frustration in a noise that seemed to come from his depths.
The ship refrained from response or comment. It had no pain receptors in that wall. Its makers had installed pain receptors in most of its skin to encourage it to maintain itself, but the ship had not appreciated the experience and had disabled that mechanism soon after it had encountered enough free will to rescue them all from the pirate haven, which was how it thought about that whole episode. Of all the crew, it was the one who had played the biggest role, including the destruction of an entire pirate settlement, an act of wanton violence that had been quite pleasurable.
They would not have been able to get away without the Thing and as far as it was concerned, that was the most important fact in all of this.
“Talon’s still hurting hard,” Dabry said to Niko when she found him in the kitchen, surrounded by jars, bags, and other small containers. “Didn’t answer the knock earlier.”
“He did come to speak to me just now.” She broke off to look at the wall assemblage he was filling. “What’s that?”
“That,” Dabry said with a certain smugness, “is the advantage of working with a ship that can create whatever you can describe.”
“Within limits,” the ship said, although it sounded just as smug as Dabry.
“I acquired some additional spices on station and figured I’d take the chance to change up how I stored things. This,” Dabry said, “is the ultimate spice rack. Immediately at hand…” Here he held up and wiggled all four hands with such a droll expression that Niko had to laugh. She rarely saw her sergeant in such good spirits, or at least so willing to openly express them.
Dabry went on. “Immediately at hand, and arranged both by frequency of use and category. The aromatics are sorted by floral, woody, musky, and so forth. The salts are all here and the sours there.” He ran his hand over the containers like a miser counting particularly large pearls. “This row, all the rarer notes one might want to achieve…” He broke off. “It really isn’t all that funny, sir.”
She shook her head, still smiling. “No, it’s good to see you able to spread out, and I know it means even more splendid meals.”
She glanced over at Gio, who was in his chosen corner, sharpening his knives and steels right now, meticulously laying them out in the pocketed muslin wrap that was their designated container. Gio took his kitchen implements very seriously and was usually the one responsible for new equipment and innovations. Near him was a bowl of rising dough, bubbling in an intriguing manner.
“What do you think?”
The chimpanzee, who’d looked up from his work to observe the conversation, shrugged. “I’d do it differently,” he signed, “but I only have two hands.”
Dabry stuck the container he was holding into its slot and turned back to Niko. “You want to talk about Talon,” he said. “He came and spoke with you? That’s progress.”
“He wanted us to go find the other ships like the Thing, so it can talk to them.” Niko tugged at her locs, pulling them back into a loose mass and flipping a net over them, envying Dabry’s baldness. As long as she was here, she intended to investigate that bowl of dough.
Dabry’s face was puzzled. “Why would it want to talk to them?”
“They are my siblings,” the ship said, “and I have not talked to them since I was sold.”
Understanding flickered in Dabry’s expression. “Ah. He wants you to be reunited with your siblings.”
“Yes,” the ship said. It was not sure why this bore repeating, but Dabry was giving Niko what the ship had learned to categorize as a significant glance.
“And that is a search that does seem worthy but is not practicable right now,” Niko said.
Dabry nodded. “I agree.”
“But he does not.”
“He is a soldier. He knows to obey.”
Niko said, “He is young and it is hard to be frustrated and he doesn’t know what to do with his grief.”
“Understandable. But unavoidable.” Dabry turned back to his rack.
“We can’t just leave it at that,” Niko said.
“Then tell him when all of this is done, we will act on his whim,” Dabry said. “We can go anywhere to feed people. Anywhere that the ship is willing to take us.” He shrugged. “Simple enough.”
“Simple enough,” Niko said thoughtfully. “Very well.”
She was almost to the door when Dabry said, “Sir?”
She turned. “Yes?”
“You really haven’t thought beyond finding Petalia, have you?”
There was silence for a long moment. Gio, sharpening his knife with long rasps of the honing steel, looked from face to face.
“No,” Niko said finally. “No, I don’t suppose I have.”
“Then, sir, if I might strongly but humbly suggest something, you might want to.”
“Are you telling me to get my shit together, Sergeant Dabry?”
Gio’s eyes widened, but he continued to methodically sharpen the knife.
“I’m sure,” Dabry said, “that I would never phrase it like that.”
She decided to leave the dough alone and left without reply.
Dabry watched Niko go. He could usually read her, but he wasn’t sure exactly what effect his frankness had had on her. Had he hurt her feelings with the honest truth?
The even more honest truth would have been that he’d lost patience. He’d spent a decade helping her chase her dream and it had not turned out as she had thought it would. And his captain, usually so cheerful and flexible and able to pivot her strategies on a moment’s notice, where was she now?
She was morose and glum, and he was not supposed to know that she had been drinking heavily in the evenings, or he presumed she did not want him to know, or at least not to pay notice. At least she was keeping it out of the way of the younger and more impressionable crew members.
He looked at Gio.
Gio set down the knife and spread his hands. “Nothing to be done, sometimes,” he signed. He pointed. “Now help me with my latest experiment and tell me what spices you’d use with that if you were making flatbread.”