"Cut off in the middle of a transmission," Craig repeated, touching the tips of his fingers to the gray plastic hatch numbers as he followed. "Mechanical problems?"

Pedro snorted. "On Jan's ship? I don't think so. Jan considered her ship a part of her body." He tossed the information in Torin's direction. "No way it would have the kind of mechanical problems that'd keep them from getting a message out for four days. Wouldn't happen. Just, no. And," he added darkly, "Sirin said they'd picked up a maker."

"The kind of salvage that'll make you," Craig explained.

Torin nodded and filed the slang away as she also touched the hatch numbers. It was a habit they'd both picked up since discovering a marker left in their brains sometimes caused the plastic aliens to spontaneously react to their touch. Sometimes. But it was all they had. When the hatch numbers remained inert, she turned her attention back to the matter at hand. If the salvage ship had been military, she'd assume they'd been attacked.

"You think they were attacked?" Craig asked Pedro as though he'd been following Torin's train of thought.

"Don't like to think it, but…" Pedro spread his hands and shrugged.

It was unlikely but possible, Torin acknowledged silently, that a CSO could get caught up and destroyed in a naval battle. Sometimes they came in a little close.

"Fukking pirates!"

She grabbed Craig's arm and pulled him to a stop. "Pirates?"

He nodded. "They net your pen with buoys to keep you from folding to Susumi. Most people dump the pen at that point, give it up. Sirin wouldn't."

"Wait." Torin shook her head, trying to settle the thought. "There are actually people in ships-criminals in ships-stealing lawfully acquired salvage?"

"You didn't know?"

"There was a war on, I was busy." The concept of criminal activity on the scale of bad vid programming was a little hard to absorb. This wasn't an episode of SpaceCops; real people, people Craig knew, were being attacked. "What's being done about it? Are the Wardens involved?" The Wardens dealt with crime outside the jurisdiction of planets-or systems depending on local resources-and answered directly to Parliament, specifically the Justice Minister.

"Wardens don't do shit. They're supposed to send the Navy out to chase them down, but…" Pedro shrugged again. "… there's a war on. They're busy."

"War's over." Although, given the scale of the conflict and the geography of space, not to mention pure bloody-mindedness of some participants, battles continued to be fought.

"And I'm sure they'll get around to us eventually." Pedro's tone had moved past dry to desiccated.

Torin's hand dropped to her slate at the same time Craig wrapped callused fingers around her wrist. She was impressed he knew her that well.

"Okay, your first instinct is to fix it, I get that," he said quietly, "but who are you going to tell who doesn't already know?"

"Presit."

She tried not to laugh as Craig opened his mouth and closed it a few times.

"Presit?" he managed at last. "Are you shitting me? You never liked her."

"Liking her has nothing to do with it." Presit a Tur durValintrisy had been a furry little pain in Torin's ass from the moment she'd appeared on the alien ship, Big Yellow, determined to get the story in spite of its highly classified nature. While true that the reporter had far too high an opinion of her own importance, Torin had come to realize that media could be used as a powerful weapon and pointing powerful weapons had made up a large part of her previous career.

"The pirates are going after salvage operators now because you're… we're," she corrected when Craig's grip tightened, "in small ships working independently. If they get away with it unopposed long enough, they'll up their game and start going after more lucrative targets. Ore carriers, say."

"There's a rumor unmanned ore carriers are going missing in statistically relevant numbers," Pedro interrupted.

"There you go. Presit tells the story, the mining cartels see the danger, they put pressure on their representatives in Parliament, Parliament pressures the Navy, and the Navy finally gets its head out of its ass."

"Just like that?" Pedro's brows had risen nearly to his hairline.

"It's a fairly simple cascade of cause and effect." Torin shrugged. "No guarantee, but we won't hit anything if we don't pull the trigger."

Pedro raised both hands in surrender. "I bow to your superior knowledge of violent responses."

When she shot him a pointed glance, Craig released her wrist.

"Presit's a big shot celebrity now," he reminded her as she touched the screen of her slate. "You think she'll even answer your call?"

"Probably not. That's why I'm using your account. Presit likes him," she added to Pedro who grinned wide and white at the emphasis. "If he'd been shorter and furrier, I'd have had a fight on my hands."

Craig's protests carried them the rest of the way into the center of the station and the large, open area Pedro called the market.

Torin had seen variations on every station she'd ever been on. Social species liked to congregate, to see and be seen, to take comfort in knowing they weren't alone. This particular market had clearly once been the shuttle bay of a large transport. The four individual bays across the narrow, inboard end had been turned into two sizable shops bracketing what looked like a popular bar.

Torin exchanged a speaking glance with Craig about the amount of visible plastic, then stepped out of the way as half a dozen shouting kids-Human and Krai-charged past. The dominant scent seemed to be fried egg, and she wondered where the chickens were. Chickens had adapted remarkably well to space, and eggs provided a protein source that not even those Elder Races who professed to be appalled by the taking of life for food could get all more-evolved-than-thou about.

Small kiosks, selling what looked like everything from body parts to engine parts, dotted the actual docking area although very few people seemed interested in the merchandise on display. The twenty or so people Torin could see stood around in small groups. The di'Taykan's hair lay flat, and everyone's body language shouted waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Waiting to see if one of theirs had been attacked by pirates.

No. Waiting to see if one of hers had been attacked by pirates.

Because these were her people now.

Given that, Torin took another look around. Used to be, she could pick her people out of a mixed group because they were part of a whole. Marines, for all the physical differences inherent in three separate species, had a similarity of movement written on bone and muscle by training and experience. Even in a crowd of civilians, they were aware of each other and could be pulled into a unit with a word.

Their decision to take up the responsibility of defending the vast bulk of Confederation space and the nonaggressive species that lived there kept them a people apart.

These new people had decided to live apart, their only connection that decision.

As she followed Pedro across the docking area, she noted that Craig had been identified as one of them. A few greeted him by name, but as they were moving purposefully toward a destination, no one tried to pull him out of formation. In contrast, she had been identified as "other." All of the children and most of the adults in the market stared openly at her. Most of the stares were speculative, those who recognized her passing the news on to those who didn't. Some of the adults seemed openly hostile. Until they were in a position to open fire, Torin didn't give a H'san's ass about hostile. No one ever bled out as the result of a pissy expression.

Conversations ebbed and flowed as they passed and, in their wake, she could hear movement from group to group picking up.