Also, she believed in doing what was necessary in order to win, up to and including fighting dirty. She didn't so much throw him off the bluff as take him off with her.

The water was as cold as it looked. "Net's away, Captain!"

Leaning back in his command chair, Mackenzie Cho, scrapped a thumbnail over his stubble, the soft shup shup shup adding to the background noise, and listened to Huirre counting down the distance until contact.

"Twenty kilometers. Fifteen kilometers."

"Firebreather's Susumi engines have come on-line, Captain!" di'Berinango Dysun half turned from her station, eyes darkened to a burnt orange, hair flipping around her head in a tangerine aurora.

The three di'Taykan on the crew had been running from trouble on their home world before signing on, but given the differences in Human and Taykan aging, they were still little more than kids out looking for thrills. Dysun was a natural in the control room, though-followed orders like she'd been trained to it-and both her thytrins had skills he could use.

When Cho jerked a thumb toward Dysun's board, she whirled back around, adding, "They must've seen the net."

"Not your job to speculate," he growled.

"Five kilometers," Huirre announced.

It was possible, Cho allowed, that the civilian salvage operator at the controls of the Firebreather had been feeding data into their Susumi equations since leaving the debris field, cargo pen bulging with salvage. It was possible the Susumi engines coming on-line had nothing to do with the approaching net. And if the Susumi drive didn't kick in before the net covered the final three kilometers, it wouldn't matter.

"Two, one… we have contact! Anchor lines have caught the pen, net is spreading."

"Power up the buoys."

Huirre slapped his board. "Aye, aye, Captain!"

"Susumi engines are powering down." This time, Dysun kept her eyes on the data.

Of course the engines were powering down. Only a suicidal fool would fold into Susumi space when their equations had just been fukked beyond correction. Galaxy-class battle cruisers with a full complement of Susumi engineers had slammed out of Susumi space into unforgiving solid objects because of a missed decimal, so a seat-of-the-pants pilot and a cheap computer had no chance with the random pulsing from the buoys making an accurate equation the next thing to impossible.

Some might say actually impossible.

Cho didn't believe in the impossible. There was always a way. Case in point: in spite of a dishonorable discharge from the Confederation Navy designed to force him into jobs well below his skill level and ambition, he'd still gotten his captain's ticket. Even if he'd had to take it by force.

The days when some idiot with a bit of braid, a fool who'd got his rank from luck rather than skill could order him around were over. Long over.

"Captain, the Firebreather is coming around."

"Interesting." Straightening, he stared up at the large screen he'd had installed to give the illusion of an external view in spite of the bridge having been buried deep in the bowels of the ship for safety. Most CSOs cut their losses at this point, dumped their pens, engaged their default equations, and left the victor the spoils. Against all odds, the Firebreather was coming around. "I wonder if they've forgotten what happens to ships that challenge us?" he said thoughtfully.

Huirre snorted. "No one's challenged for a while, have they?"

An excellent point, Cho admitted silently. Memory being what it was, it was past time to remind the salvage operators that resistance was useless. Get them talking again about the Heart of Stone and her merciless captain.

"Captain." Dysun's hair had flattened against her head. "I'm picking up a strange energy signal."

"Define strange?"

"Like a…"

The bridge shuddered as the Heart of Stone took a hit.

"Like a weapon?" Cho asked quietly.

Her shoulders rose a little at the threat in his voice. "Yes, sir."

Confederation law put all weapons in the hands of the military. CSOs were supposed to run crying for help while the Navy-buzzing around with their collective heads up their collective asses because the war had turned out to be a big fukking joke-did sweet fuk all about the big, bad pirates. Seemed like this fool hadn't got the memo.

"Huirre."

"Captain?"

"Don't damage the pen."

The Krai grinned. On a species able to not only eat, but digest pretty much any organic matter in known space, the baring of teeth gained an added significance Cho appreciated. Huirre danced the fingers of both hands and the long, prehensile toes of one foot across his board.

An instant later, the bow of the Firebreather exploded, creating a miniature starburst of debris.

"Two bodies, Captain."

One of the things Cho liked best about Dysun, about all three di'Taykan, was their lack of concern when people died. People always ended up dying in his business.

"No life signs," she added.

"Damage?"

"Uh…" Confused, Dysun waved at the screen. "The shot probably killed them, but they might have decompressed…"

"He means damage to the Heart, you serley idiot," Huirre muttered. "We took some outer hull damage by the cargo bay, got one of our sensor arrays completely fukking fried, and I'm betting…" He nodded toward the flashing lights on the comm panel. "… Krisk wants to know what the fuk is going on."

"Take us in alongside the pen," Cho ordered, then opened the channel to engineering, cutting Krisk off in mid rave with a terse, "Shut up. If there's no breach and no chance of a breach, that salvage remains our first concern. Make sure the hatch to the cargo bay hasn't been compromised. I'm on my way down."

The Heart of Stone had been designed as a scout ship for the Navy. When Cho'd taken it over, he'd doubled her firepower and added a cargo bay. Fortunately, vacuum didn't care about aerodynamics. In his line of work, he couldn't waste time reworking Susumi equations for every piece of crap they picked up-space was big, sure, but there was always a chance the Navy could accidentally stumble over them while they were sitting around dividing by the cube root of who the fuk cares. Cargo had to fit inside the ship's set parameters.

When he arrived in the extension, delayed a few minutes by a sparking panel near the air lock that joined the old and new, the outer hatch was open and Dysun's thytrins were working the grapples, plucking the salvage out of the Firebreather's pen.

"Pen's too big to fit inside," Almon explained before Cho could ask what the hell they were doing. Eyes locked on the screen, he had so many light receptors open very little of the pale yellow remained. "Don't know what this guy found, Captain, but he found one fuk of a lot of it."

The deck plates quivered as something big came under the influence of the artificial gravity on the other side of the inner hatch.

"Sorry, Captain." Nadayki, the youngest of the three di'Taykan, flashed him a nervous smile, lime-green hair jerking back and forth in a nervous arc.

Cho smiled back. Nadayki's trouble with the law had been the reason the three had initially gone on the run. The Taykan were stupid when it came to family loyalties. "You dent my ship and I'll space you."

"He will, too. Space you soon as look at you. Mackenzie Cho's the meanest son of a bitch in this end of the galaxy."

"How many times do I have to tell you to stop calling my mother names?" Cho said quietly as Nat Forester moved up to stand just behind his left shoulder, slate in hand.

"At least once more, Cap. Krisk says he needs condenser parts and Doc says if you pitch another field kitchen, he's going to throw six kinds of fit."

"That kitchen had been slagged."

Nat shrugged. "He says he could have fixed it. And he likes the food."