"I are not hanging around here indefinitely. I are having more important things to be doing than to be watching her breathe, so for the last time before you are suddenly being part of your own not very complimentary vid about medical personnel who are being deliberately obstructive to the media, you are needing to be telling me when she are waking up."

Imperious, demanding, and self-righteous with an order of scrambled syntax on the side; Torin knew that voice. Couldn't figure out how Presit a Tur durValintrisy, ace reporter for Sector Central News, had managed to push her way into Med-op but figured the duty noncom would have her furry little ass out of there so fast it wasn't worth worrying about.

Torin couldn't hear the response to Presit's demands, but she did hear the reporter's reply.

"Fine. But I are not going anywhere until you are telling me where Civilian Salvage Operator Craig Ryder are being. His ship are here, and his ship are being damaged, and he are not with his ship. Or with her."

And it all came back to Torin in a rush of sound and light and pain.

She'd punched up the Susumi engines, hoping that the panel she'd spot welded to the hole in the control room wouldn't throw off the equation too badly. As the patch's sole purpose was to bring Promise's external variables back to the dimensions in the default equations, it was a long way from airtight. Torin would have to remain suited up during the short fold back to the station and help. She had water and could easily go a day and a half on her emergency rations.

Not pleasantly, but easily.

The military had done tests on the protection an HE suit offered against Susumi radiation by strapping a suit filled with sensors to the outside of a ship during a fold. After twenty-seven hours, the suit had begun to fail. After thirty hours, levels were fatal for di'Taykan. After thirty-two hours, for Humans. After thirty-seven hours for Krai. Torin's fold would take thirty-four hours, but she figured she had two things going for her. First, the military had never performed testing on live subjects and while thirty-two hours might be fatal for a Human, that didn't necessarily mean it was fatal for this Human. Second, the patch would block a portion of the radiation, buying her time.

That was the last thought she could remember. The silent hope that the patch would buy her enough time had segued right into Presit's less than dulcet tones.

Torin had messaged the reporter back on Salvage Station 24. If Presit had time to both find her and get to her out on the edge, then how long had she been out?

Fuk!

Craig had been taken by the pirates. She had no time to lie around.

Her eyelids felt like they weighed a hundred kilos each. Forcing them open, she dragged her tongue over dry lips, and asked, "How long?"

A startled med tech spun around toward her, feathers ruffled, pale green crest rising. "You're awake!"

"She are obviously awake!" Presit snapped, moving closer to the bed and gripping the railing with a small hand that looked like a black latex glove emerging from the cuff of a thick fur coat. "You are being unconscious in this medical facility for seven hours. I are being here for three of them."

"The pirates have Craig." Teeth clenched, Torin sat up.

"You are having proof of that?" Presit demanded. Behind her, the tech spoke into her slate.

Torin stared at her reflection in the reporter's mirrored glasses. Even taking the curve of the lens into account, she looked like hell. Fuk it; she'd given sitreps in worse condition. Her brain was still too scrambled to separate out time spent sideways of reality in Susumi space and apply it to time passed, so she settled on listing the events that had brought her here in order of occurrence. "Recently, two Civilian Salvage Operators were killed attempting to keep their salvage from pirates." Her voice sounded like she'd been swallowing glass. Her throat agreed that was a valid observation. "This is not standard operating procedure; salvage operators drop and run, but these two found something worth dying to protect. A short time later, another CSO was tortured to death. The only thing a living CSO would have that a pirate might want is information. His death suggests they didn't get it."

"And you are knowing these two things are connected because…?"

"I don't believe in coincidence."

"Oh, well, that are all I need to be knowing."

Torin ignored the sarcasm and continued. "Approximately thirteen hours ago, pirates captured another CSO-Craig-in what is most likely a second attempt to get the information they did not get from Rogelio Page. I was left for dead."

"They are leaving you for dead? They are being fools for not being sure. And all that," Presit added, tapping one metallic-blue claw against the railing for emphasis, "are being a theory, not proof. Word around this station are being that you were attacked by the Primacy. You were being in a debris field very close to the edge, were you not?"

"I saw the ship," Torin said tersely, forcing the railing down and Presit back. The bright pink skin on her hand startled her and startled her again when she swung her bare legs out of bed. Right. The foam. The color would fade in time, but time was what she didn't have. "It wasn't a Primacy ship."

"And your word are being good enough because you are being Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr."

The floor beside the bed was freezing. "The Promise's computer wasn't damaged. There may be a record of the attacking ship in her data stores, but it doesn't matter if there isn't. I know the ship. It was docked here, at the station, repairing damage from Susumi radiation at the same time we were here selling salvage. Our sensors picked up residual Susumi radiation when we first arrived at the debris field. The debris field one of the crew of the attacking ship suggested we check out."

"That are perhaps being a few too many coincidences."

Torin grinned; she knew that tone. Presit sensed a story. "No shit."

The room spun when she stood and she sat back down considerably faster than she'd risen.

"Speaking of damage from Susumi radiation," Presit added, "they are telling me you are having been damaged yourself when you are arriving. If you are having to be in Susumi space much longer, they are not being able to fix things. As it is, you are being mostly fine. Oh, and they say you are smelling terrible when they are peeling you out of the suit," she added with a toothy grin as the doctor fluttered into the room and came to a sudden stop.

Katrien were omnivores, but Presit had an impressive mouthful of sharp, white teeth, and Torin didn't blame the doctor for not moving any closer.

"You…" A slender finger pointed at Torin. "… shouldn't be out of bed." He snapped the halves of his residual beak together in irritation.

"Will it kill me?" Torin asked.

"Being out of bed? No, but…"

"Presit, that pile on the chair looks like my clothing. Pass it over."

"What are your last slave dying of?" She trilled something to a slightly larger Katrien, bringing him out of the far corner of the room and into Torin's field of vision. "I are lending you Ceelin a Tar guPolinstarta…

Confirmation of gender; a Tar was the male designation. Secondary sexual characteristics were hard to read on a species with fur a minimum of ten centimeters deep.

"… but you are understanding he are being my assistant, not yours."

"I just want my clothes," Torin pointed out, taking them from Ceelin with a nod of thanks. "I don't need…" The pile slid out of her hands as her thumbs refused to work properly.

Ceelin caught the clothes before they hit the floor and set them beside her on the bed. "I are not minding helping you," he said quietly, muzzle crinkling in a tentative smile. "If I are handing you one thing at a time, it are maybe being easier." The darker fur on his brow folded into a deeper vee, dipping down behind the top edge of his dark glasses, as he frowned at her bra. "But I are not knowing what this is."