‘Okay, fine.’ Olli shouldered past her and Solace and set her frame to crouch in the centre of the passenger compartment. It took up most of the available space. ‘I’ll just keep doing his job as well as mine, shall I?’
‘That’s not fair,’ Solace objected.
‘Didn’t ask your opinion.’ Olli looked wiped-out herself. Her Scorpion was physically wired to the pilot’s console with heavily insulated cables, and the inside of the Dark Joan fairly crackled with electromagnetic fields. Kris guessed that she’d jury-rigged the packet runner’s gravitic engine to run interference with Jericho’s natural EM field, but she’d still had to somehow keep basic ship operations going. It obviously wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs keeping on top of it.
‘Bloody Patho tech doesn’t help. You don’t make it to be monkeyed with,’ Olli added, sending Solace another filthy look. The Partheni didn’t rise to it. ‘This your Hiver friend, are they?’
‘And hello to you too,’ Trine said. They were looking woefully at their damaged leg, which was bent at an awkward-looking angle. ‘May I at least assume your vessel has an adequate workshop?’
‘Medvig’s tools’ll be good enough for you,’ Olli said curtly. Then the Joan had cut free from Jericho’s atmosphere and they were heading for the beacon of the Vulture God. ‘Kit’ll be panicking,’ the specialist predicted. ‘Been out of all contact for way too long. Vulture, this is Joan. We’re coming in.’
The last faint vestiges of the upper atmosphere burned about them as Olli accelerated the packet runner to a respectable speed, clipping around the planet’s curvature. Kris glanced at the nav console and decoded the readouts there.
‘We’re not going to the elevator hub?’
‘Look, we were getting some attention there,’ Olli told her. ‘And then there was the stuff Kit scavved from the Raptorid’s comms. We could have sat tight and hoped the Jenny Kite ID would cover us. But who knows whether that Magdan turd hired someone with two good eyes and half a brain? So we reckoned we wouldn’t want to fuck about with permits when time came to scoot. Didn’t know who might be beating on the hatch, see right?’
‘Right,’ Kris agreed.
‘Vulture, this is Joan. Kit, tell me something useful.’ Olli let herself sag back in the frame, flying the ship with her eyes closed now her sensors and instruments were clear of interference.
‘If he’s dodged round the planet, the EM will mess with our signal,’ Solace suggested.
‘Yeah, maybe.’ The specialist sounded unconvinced. ‘Kit, you crab bastard, speak to me.’
‘You can’t say that,’ Kris told her, knee-jerk.
‘He doesn’t care.’
‘You don’t know that, and just don’t. And knock off the “Patho” stuff while you’re at it.’
Olli stared at her, obviously working up to an acidic comment, then just as visibly she backed down. ‘Fine. Can I just call him a Hanni bastard then . . . oh god damn.’
They’d picked up the Vulture. Hunched over it like a predatory bat was the sleek double-pronged shape of the Raptorid. They could see that it was clamped to the salvage vessel and there was an umbilical connecting the two.
‘We have comms contact,’ Olli noted tonelessly. ‘Turdwagon’s hailing us.’
‘Open it up,’ Kris suggested. ‘Give it to me. I’ll talk.’
‘Give it nothing until we’ve heard from Kit.’
‘I know.’ She stepped over the part-folded limbs of the Scorpion and dropped into the pilot’s seat. After the chase and fight through that carnivorous forest, she didn’t need any of this.
‘Good day to you, crew of the Vulture God. I assume we don’t need to bother with your false alias?’
‘It’s a real alias,’ Kris said, ‘just a false name.’ Pedantry wasn’t going to win her any diplomacy awards but she wasn’t in the mood for niceties. ‘Identify yourself.’
‘I think you recognize my Raptorid,’ She recognized the voice now, too, though she wouldn’t give the Boyarin the satisfaction of showing it. ‘And you are the attorney. I remember you. We were having such a pleasant exchange before your warrior-dyke broke in. You have the honour of speaking to the Boyarin Piter Tchever Uskaro. I, on the other hand, am unfortunate enough to be addressing a crew of wanted criminals.’
He doesn’t half like the sound of his own voice, Kris thought.