Kenersk broke the link.

Presit snorted. "If he are not supplying his sources, I are not trusting his information."

Torin drummed her fingers against the control panel's inert trim. "Good thing it's my call, then."

"Why are you trusting him? Because he are stroking your ego and calling you Gunnery Sergeant."

"No. Because he feels guilty about Winkler getting the sah, and he owes me for not calling in the Wardens. Salvage operators don't like to be beholden. It makes them feel dependent."

"They are not liking to be dependent on the kindness of others. It are a quote from Human literature," she added, sounding annoyed that Torin hadn't recognized it. "I are having read it at university in XenoHistory. You are being familiar with it?"

"No." She slid her hand between Presit's fingers and the board. Presit's claws caught against her knuckles but didn't break the skin. "Don't touch that."

"I are turning light levels down! Humans are always keeping the lights too bright."

"I'll turn them down after we fold. Until then, I need to see the board."

"I are thinking that the station's docking computer are doing the hard part," Presit sniffed.

A ship the size of the Second Star was no harder to fly than an APC was to drive. Easier, since dirtside driving provided a lot more solid objects to hit. Also, APCs were seldom empty, the driver responsible for every Marine on board. APCs, however, didn't have Susumi engines. Torin had read somewhere that eighty percent of all accidents in space were a direct result of a Susumi error. "Firrg's taking the unmanned drones because they're the most likely to go missing in a fold." No computer could compensate one hundred percent for the unexpected.

Presit made a noise that sounded remarkably like the Katrien version of, Well, duh. and then said, "Who are being his source, I are wondering."

"He said it's an all Krai ship," Torin muttered studying the charts to place Prospect in known space. "Four-day fold from here…"

"Four days are not so long, but even you, ex-Gunnery Sergeant Kerr, even you are not being able to go up against a ship full of Krai pirates on your own. Not even if they are out of their ship and under the influence. You are being weighed down by numbers alone. Although," she added thoughtfully, head cocked to one side, "that would be having amazing visuals."

"I don't have to go up against a ship full of Krai pirates. I only need to get one of them alone."

"You are probably needing to be getting the captain alone," Presit scoffed. "You are not able to guarantee anyone else are having the information you need."

"Then I'll get the captain."

"And it being are just that easy for you?"

Torin pulled up the charts with the Susumi equations. Remembered Craig bitching about her basic level math. "I'm motivated."

"So, I are thinking that while we are being trapped together in Susumi space and are having time, you should be filling me in on the Silsviss."

Stretched out on the bunk, replaying her last moments with Craig over and over, Torin had been paying next to no attention to Presit's background babble, but that got her attention. "I should fill you in on the Silsviss? Where the hell did that come from?"

"If a large, aggressive, reptilian species are joining the Confederation…" One foot pressed against the edge of the control panel, Presit rocked the pilot's chair back and forth. Unlike the chair in the Promise, the pivot point was mercifully silent. "… I are thinking smaller mammalian species are wanting to know about it."

She had a point, Torin acknowledged. On Silsviss, small mammalian species were considered snacks. "Well, you're out of luck because I can't talk about them."

"Can't or won't."

"Both." Sitting up, Torin scraped a clump of silver-tipped fur off the blanket and wondered just why she'd agreed to have Presit come along. They'd established beyond a doubt that the reporter was Craig's friend, but she wasn't Torin's. No more than Torin was hers.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Faulty logic from a military point of view, where nothing prevented the enemy of an enemy from also being an enemy, but Torin supposed it worked in this instance. Craig had given them common ground; perhaps it was time to move beyond that and establish a connection of their own.

One of the basic tenets of the Corps was that no Marine got left behind, that in the midst of violence and death, in spite of rank or lack of rank or species or gender, they were all in it together. For whatever reason, Presit had stepped up when no one else had.

"There are being stories about Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr and the Silsviss. I are thinking you are wanting to set the record straight. Ceelin are just sleeping. He could be setting up…"

"No. I was senior NCO of the platoon accompanying the first lot of diplomats," Torin told her, rolling the fur into a tight silver cylinder. "That's all."

Presit snorted. "That are not what the rumors are saying. I are knowing what you are doing on Big Yellow, and I are knowing what you are doing on Crucible, and I are knowing what you are doing on the aliens' prison planet, so, given what I are knowing, I are wondering if there are being any truth to those rumors."

"Exaggerations…"

"I are not doubting that," Presit snorted. "But I are also not doubting there are being truths at their core and a story people are wanting to hear."

"It's not a story I can tell." It had been a military exercise, and for all the law said full disclosure to the press, the brass had kept the final facts need to know only. As Presit opened her mouth, Torin held up a hand. "But when I can tell it, I'll tell it to you. Okay?"

The lights were low enough that Presit hadn't put on her glasses, but her eyes were as unreadable as the mirrored lenses would have been. After a long moment she nodded, fluffed her ruff with her claws, and said, "Okay."

Progress. As her head began to tip forward of its own volition, Torin stretched back out on the bunk. The random moments of weakness came less frequently but were still a disturbing reminder that she wasn't yet at a hundred percent. The one good thing about time wasted in Susumi was that it gave her time to finish healing.

"I are hating this."

Pedro, or a member of his family, had scratched Sonrisa de senora Luck sobre nosotros in the painted metal above the bunk. "You hate what?"

"Waiting. We are having gone through the information the CSOs are sending us. We are having researched the Prospect Processing Station, not that there are being much available information to research. We are having decided I are being distraction while you are being muscle."

It hadn't so much been a decision, Torin amended slightly, as it had been the only possible division of labor.

"Now we are having nothing to do. Unless you are telling…"

"No." The plastic trim around the small light over the bunk still had no reaction to her touch. She closed her eyes. "Sleeping now."

"I are knowing why you are sleeping!"

"Still healing. Go talk to Ceelin."

"Oh, no. I are knowing that you are trying to be ignoring me…"

Torin had spent a high percentage of her adult life sleeping in war zones and not even Presit could match an artillery barrage for either volume or duration. Although she tried. The computer countdown ended and Craig felt the ship's vibration change as they came out of Susumi space. With his last meal sitting like salvage in his stomach, he prayed to the gods of his childhood that with him and his codes on board, the ship had gone to ground rather than gone hunting for new prey. If he were captain and he had a crewmember he didn't trust and had just picked up a new captive he needed to brutalize, he'd put that crewmember back in the room with the chair. Only, this time, the new crewmember would be the one standing. And that new crewmember would cross a line they couldn't cross back or they'd take a short walk out the air lock. Craig liked to think he knew what his choice would be, but he was honest enough with himself to realize it wasn't something he could know until he actually had to make the decision.