Kyle’s head spun. It had, in fact, been spinning since last night. Vodka he could take. Single malt? No problem. Tasty, in fact. Tequilla? OK, painful, but Kyle could do it. But what had possessed him to try and drink a bunch of Anyuvin under the table when it was Akonya going around? In fact, Kyle wondered, why had he started drinking at all?
Kyle sat up. OK, not too bad. He checked his wallet. Yup, it was still there, if a little lighter for all the Akonya he’d bought. So, they hadn’t robbed him. That was nice. Footsteps outside the room made him look up in time to see Rašak pull the curtain aside and hand him down a cup of Nyakadj.
“That has no Akonya.” He said, turned and left with a barked laugh. “‘Humans!”
Well, Kyle thought, I had that coming.
When the Nykadj had cleared his head somewhat, Kyle got up and walked out into what turned out to be a Anyuvin family’s common area. Apparently they’d pulled a sleeping mat into a storage room for him. Which was wise, because even when he wasn’t drunk, Kyle had a tendency to snore. Back in his freight line days, he’d earned the nickname “chainsaw.” Come to think of it, maybe that was why Jerry had left. The Argo wasn’t a very big ship.
One of the Anyuvin, apparently taking pity on him, came over with a bowl of something porridge-like. It smelled bland enough, but his stomach had different ideas about it’s palatability.
“Non,” Kyle said. “Kani ezedin, date non.”
The Anyuvin bowed slightly and took the bowl away with a quiet laugh as Kyle found his way out into the bar. Rašak was sweeping the floor, his tail keeping cadence with the broom.
“Where’s Vazi?” Kyle asked.
“Vazi at Argo.” Rašak said, a quiet chuckling in the back of his throat. “You meet him there.”
Kyle tried to run — at first — then decided walking was a better idea. Besides, how could Vazi get into the Argo? Kyle wasn’t a bad tech himself and he’d custom built the Argo’s security systems. If Vazi had tried to break in, the Argo would be screaming for him over comms. She wasn’t, so, obviously, Vazi hadn’t. It would be just fine with Kyle if Vazi had to cool their heels in the docking bay.
When Kyle finally reached the docks, he saw the Argo’s aft cargo bay open.
“Your new crew’s here, Steppan,” One of the guards said.
“You let them in?”
“Why not?” The guard shrugged. “It said you’d hired him and it had the security codes.”
As Kyle stomped up the cargo ramp, he heard the guard laugh and say, “What’s the matter, Steppan? Can’t find any humans who’ll fly with you?”
Kyle walked forward to the engineering station. A tall, dark maned, dark furred Anyuvin was busy bolting a computer rack to the bulkhead over the fold down engineering panel on the starboard side. Underneath the panel, a rolling tool chest had been strapped into place. The control panel had obviously been raised to accomadate it and, given how crowded the area was, that panel wasn’t going to fold “up” again any time in the near future.
“Your security is not good,” the Anyuvin said without even turning around. “I will correct that vefore we leave.”
“Well, thank you so very much,” Kyle answered, all the while thinking that if Vazi had gotten in that easily, there likely was something that needed fixing. And he was curious.
“OK, I have to ask. How did you get the codes?”
“You told me.”
Kyle shook his head. (Which was a bad idea.) “What?”
“Last night. You were drinking with us.”
“Yeah, well, that much I remember,” Kyle said. Sort of, he added mentally, “but how does that make my security bad?”
“Vesides you veing careless?” Vazi turned and stared at Kyle with amber eyes that almost matched his own, and ticked off the points on their fingers. “One, your intrusion sensor lines are unarmored and unshielded. I could have induced a counter signal quite easily. Or, attached a sensor to the hull and waited for you to enter the code. It would not have veen hard to vick out of the noise. Two, you are tied into the Sarvek Dome network and the intrusion detection software on your systems is second rate, if that. Three, your security monitors record to volatile storage. If I had gotten inside the Argo, I could have erased my vresence from the logs quite easily.” Vazi ran out of fingers and held up their thumb. “Four, the physical locks, while adequate for most places, are not good enough for here.”
Out of digits on one hand, Vazi switched to the other. “And, five, only an idiot uses a four digit code with no viometric vackup.”
“Hey!” Kyle objected, “They only get 10 tries and then the system locks up. That’s three and a half million possible combinations — without duplicates. Who can beat those kinds of odds?”
Vazi sighed. “Someone with scanners good enough to detect wear on the keys. Four keys, less if you use duplicate numbers, get the greatest use. That gives, at most, twenty four comvinations with an almost fifty-fifty chance of guessing the sequence vefore it locks. Not good enouv.”
“Who do you think is after me? Confed Security? Who has that kind of equipment?”
Vazi’s eyes went black for a moment as the nictitating membranes in them blinked. “I do.”
Kyle tried, but couldn’t find any cargo worth carrying down to Sandhurst. (Kyle made a mental note to make sure he didn’t call it ‘Sandhurst’ in front of Vazi.) In any event, it wouldn’t have mattered because Vazi had filled half the cargo area with parts with which to ‘fix’ the Argo. Normally, Kyle would have been outraged, but Vazi was an out and out wiz and by mid-afternoon Kyle realized that the Argo would be a much better ship when Vazi was done. Well, tech-wise, at any rate.
All this generosity, however, made Kyle nervous. Besides Vazi’s work, someone had arranged for the Argo’s fuel tanks to be filled and the empty missile pylons now held wing tanks that extended the Argo’s range by about thirty percent, as best as Kyle could figure. The freezer was full too and if most of it was Anyuvin, what the hell? Kyle hadn’t had good Uradavi in years.
Still, it set off alarms in Kyle’s head. What was he getting into? Vazi wasn’t talking and neither was anyone at the Žeka Tomkoce. Kyle tried to keep up with all the changes Vazi was making, but gave up when they got to the sensor systems. The tech Vazi was using would make salvage a lot easier — and more profitable — but it was over Kyle’s head and he was beginning to feel like the Argo was becoming more Vazi’s than his.
Two days later they were out in the Black. Kyle said they should celebrate and looked longingly at the frozen Uradavi. Vazi frowned, but pulled it out anyway.
“You eat all the good things first!” Vazi complained.
“Life is short.” Kyle replied.
“True, vut if we spend the last two veeks of this trip eating edzonya, it might ve shorter than you think.”
The look on Vazi’s face promised grim repercussions. Kyle decided to try and make amends by breaking out a bottle of Rašak’s best Akonya, but Vazi just shook his head and and muttered, “Humans! How did we ever lose the war?”
“Hey, I was just trying to be nice,” Kyle said. “I don’t get drunk out here, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Vazi looked dubious.
“No, really, “ Kyle said, shaking a canister of Nyakadj leaves in the other hand. “I just thought, a little? After dinner?”
“Do you vlay šači?” Vazi asked.
“Do you have credits?” Kyle countered.