He'd decorated by attaching old-fashioned, two-dimensional, Human-centric porn to every vertical surface. The closest piece proved just how flexible a bipedal species could be. Not something Torin would want to look at every day, out in deep space, alone, but it took all kinds.

"I'll wait out here."

Craig turned just far enough to glare. "I'm fine."

"I know." Since her hand was already on his back, she traced the valley of his spine with her thumb, fingers trailing over the heavy muscle to either side. "But you don't need me hanging over your shoulder, and if I go in there with you, there won't be any other option."

His gaze swept around the cabin, then back to her. It didn't take long. "Good point," he said.

As she took her hand away, she felt him begin to relax.

Back at the bottom of the ramp, habit dropped her into an easy parade rest. If it turned out Page knew what Jan and Sirin had salvaged, knew what they'd died trying to protect, that connection might be enough to light a fire under One Who Maintains' enormous, furry ass. If it didn't, it was still information they could take to a military station in order to direct the Navy patrols. The patrols responsible for hunting down and removing the pirates.

Pirates.

She still had trouble believing it.

There wasn't enough organized violence around? People had to freelance?

Maybe the Elder Races were right. Maybe a species shouldn't achieve interstellar capability until they'd learned to manage their aggression. Not that it mattered, after a couple hundred years of war, that ship had well and truly folded and there could be no going back. She wondered how the Primacy, made up entirely of young aggressive species, was managing without the focus the gray plastic aliens had provided. Odds were about even they'd started pounding on each other.

In much less time than Torin had expected, the sound of Craig's boots ringing against the ramp pulled her around to face him.

He shook his head as he walked toward her. "Not locked, not that it mattered. There's no record of contact between Page and Firebreather, but," he added before Torin could respond, "he had been messaging someone fairly frequently on the Two-four. No idea who, but I uploaded their codes so we can find out. A mate of Alia's is maintaining a database-who uses what codes when. Not that I'm saying some might use more than one set of codes," he added, seeing her expression. "If Jan or Sirin happened to have been talking to the same person Page was…"

"Long shot," Torin acknowledged, falling into step beside him as he stepped off onto the deck. Even a tenuous connection would be better than nothing but it wouldn't get One Who Maintains or the Navy moving against the pirates.

"We'll bog in first, I'm starving." Craig threw an arm around her shoulders. "Then we go make Rogelio Page proud by taking a group of hardworking engineers for every credit they have."

"That would make him proud?"

"It'd make me happy."

When it came right down to it, the living had to be more important than the dead. "Good enough."

Torin finished checking the Susumi equation and glanced up at Craig, who backed away and tried to look as though he hadn't been checking it over with her. Given that mistakes were usually fatal, she didn't mind. "So, tell me why we're returning to the same debris field?"

"We have first tag on it, now Page is dead." Craig scowled at the empty coffeepot, then took it into the head to fill it, raising his voice over the sound of running water. "Not to mention, if we chuck back to our previous coordinates, the government will pay for the fold. It's a little ghoulish, but it's practical since the reason we were headed there originally still stands-we know there's no surprises in the salvage to mess up a rookie run."

"Except for the pirates."

He froze halfway back through the hatch and stared at her. "Shit."

Seeing how long she could let him hang wasn't really an option; maintaining a relationship took roughly the same care as training a green second lieutenant, leaving little room for error between teasing and making him look like a fool. "If the pirates had planned on staying in that area, they'd have sent both the body and the ship into the nearest star. I expect they're long gone."

"So you gave me the gobful about it because…?"

She frowned. "Seemed like you'd forgotten them. I don't think we should."

Craig made a noncommittal noise as he crossed back to the coffeemaker. She watched him set the coffee to brew, wondering what the noise had meant. He stood, back toward her, until his mug filled, then he turned and said, "You sure you're not looking for a new enemy?"

"Why would I want a new enemy?"

"You've always had one."

"Habit?"

"Purpose."

Torin opened her mouth to deny it, then closed it again. She wasn't one hundred percent sure he was wrong. From what she could see of his expression behind the mug, he knew it.

"We just got a yabber from Alia. No connection between Firebreather and Fortune's Favor. She doesn't know who Page was messaging, but she does know Jan and Sirin weren't. Weren't messaging the same person. At all. Ever."

Torin swore softly as she cinched a tie-cable tight and checked that it was reading the mass of the salvage. "No chance of yanking the Wardens' thumbs out of their collective asses, then."

"Not for what looks to be a shitty coincidence. Torin, that piece with the electronics in it…

Grinning, Torin silently mouthed the rest of the sentence along with him.

"… has to go in the pen closest to the ship so we can hook it up and make sure there's nothing that might go active when we fold."

"I'm on it." There wasn't enough "electronics" on the piece to go active even if they hooked it directly to the engines.

"I'd mentioned that?"

"Couple of times." Considering he'd spent almost as long working alone as she had in the Corps, he wasn't doing too badly in his supervisory position. The small clump of tagged debris she was securing didn't need two people suited up, and she needed the practice. It hadn't taken her more than fifteen minutes to convince him of that. Had he been a green lieutenant, she could have done it faster. There were days she definitely missed her old life.

Demagnetizing her boots, she tightened up her safety line and used it to gain enough momentum to flip out of the pen, magging up again to drop down just forward of where she'd racked the "gun" used to attach the tags to the salvage. Fine motor skills suffered in an HE suit, so the trigger mechanism was oversized but familiar. There were a limited number of ways aim and pull could be interpreted mechanically.

Twisting to the left, she lined up the next piece of salvage in the crosshairs, and fired, careful to brace herself against the minor momentum. It would take a lot more than one shot to actually move her anywhere, and one shot was all she needed.

"No surprise you're good at that."

It would have been more surprising if she'd missed it, given the size.

"Your tax dollars at work," she muttered as she locked her suit on the tag, released her boots, and pushed off. Her jet swiveled to eighteen degrees almost immediately and fired a micro burst, lining her up more precisely. There were automated systems that would do all this from the control panel of the ship, but every piece of equipment added cost, and salvage operators never had the kind of margin that allowed them to ignore the brains and bodies they could wrap in an HE suit and use for free. Torin suspected Craig, on his own, had seldom bothered with either the jets or the 100 meters of safety line spooling out behind her.

She only wore the jets on Craig's insistence since jets and an unbreakable safety line was a fair definition of redundant.

"So…" Torin could hear him drumming his fingers against the edge of the control panel. Knew he was searching for things to say that didn't involve the suggestion that she come on in and he take it from there. "… you're not arguing the shitty coincidence theory?"