Chapter 32
Istepped down the ramp from the cargo bay and wandered my way towards the offices that held Sentar Spaceport's staff. As I stepped up, I noticed someone peeking through the window, only to dart away. I couldn't help but roll my eyes.
"Pip, these people. What are we going to do with them?" I asked, just to have a little conversation.
"Pip, pip!" he said, which I was just deciding to interpret as general encouragement, especially given that's exactly what I needed when my crew members were fighting, some idiot wanted to attack my crew, and just the general shenanigans that seemed to be orbiting around our stay here in Toussaint.
I knew that I should probably go bug Madam Chiksai when this was all done, too.
I was fairly certain that I could shake her out for at least a few credits.
But I tutted and opened the door as I pushed that aside to deal with the problem before me.
The one who had run away was coming back in. "Sorry, we're closed. Holiday." He was clearly lying through his teeth.
So I smiled back. "Oh well, that's a shame. We're really hoping to get out of your hair."
"Yeah, sorry.” He winced.
“Jimmy, I'll take this," a tired, older voice spoke up.
The kikai guy who had originally talked to me when they started the project came out from the back.
He grimaced when he saw me. "Look, I'm sure you're a wonderful person, sir—" he hesitated on my name.
"There's been a stop-work order put in on your ship. "
"Excuse me?" I puffed up. "I feel like that's something we should be notified about."
The man crossed his arms and squared his legs, as if he were about to die where he stood. Damn. Dealing with customers could turn some people into hard-asses. That wasn’t good for my purposes.
"Do you at least have a reason?" I asked, doing my best to turn this into a more amicable conversation.
"It's on good authority you wouldn't be able to pay for the work," he said.
"All right," I said slowly, "and if that's the case, you just take the ship, don't you?"
"Well, yeah," he said, stumbling over his words.
"And what if we could pay you ahead of time?" I offered. Not that we had all the money on hand, but I had ideas.
"You could?" The kikai’s tail started moving again.
"Yeah, I think we can come to a reasonable understanding and get it paid out now. Sorry, I didn't walk over here with everything I need, but we'll get it to you here shortly."
The man squinted at me, doubtful now that I’d promised to pay and then not had the money on me.
"What? You're going to have to repair it if you're going to sell it anyway,” I reassured him.
“We'll finish the repairs, but we won't spin up the core," he said, crossing his arms.
I smiled. At least that was something. "Sounds like a good deal." It seemed enough tension had bled off that he started paying attention to Pip on my shoulder.
"What's that?" he asked, as if we were a circus show, and he just found another act.
"This is Pip," I said pointedly. "Pip is a baby leviton."
"A what?" he said, and then he frowned deeply. "A l-leviton? How?" He was stunned at the sight of someone being so friendly with a small leviton.
"Yeah, we're pretty tight. Aren't we, Pip? I’m practically his father," I said, raising a fist up to his level.
The little floating whale tilted his head cutely, and I bumped him on the nose. He then reared back and slammed into my fist at full force, hard enough to make me wince.
"Ow, Pip," I said, staring at him, for him to give me his usual reply.
"Pip, pip," he cheered.
"He's just a little guy. Are humans that frail?" the maintenance supervisor asked.
I squinted at him.
"Give it a try," I gestured, and he lifted his fist, and Pip understood the game, immediately charging forward, this time with even more force than he'd used on me. The end result was the kikai guy's fist being thrown back, and then he lost his footing and fell back on his ass.
"Holy shit," the kikai cursed as he stumbled back to his feet.
"Oh yeah, they're strong, but mostly, they're just heavy," I said, and the kikai shook his head and rubbed his knuckles.
"Well, I suppose I should at least follow through on what I say. We'll go finish the shielding repair. You stiff me, though, and there will be hell to pay. Sentar Spaceports are all over the universe, and you’d get blacklisted." He waggled a finger at me.
I smiled while trying to give him dead eyes. I was surrounded by a helivore and divine. This kikai couldn't intimidate me.
After a moment of staring each other down, he ducked his head and hurried back.
I could hear him yelling at his employees.
The man was clearly embarrassed, and the poor employees would probably have it taken out on them, but that wasn't my problem to solve.
I just needed to get my ship running and my crew in order.
***
When I got back to the ship, everyone was eating at a table that had been placed in the cargo bay, with its ramp lowered. The daylight filtered in and gave us some much-needed illumination.
"How'd it go?" Brick asked.
"Good. Though I think we're going to have to split up some of our efforts." The group all looked around at each other before focusing on me with the kind of attention crew typically give a captain. Each of them was waiting as if they were a coiled spring ready to jump into action.
"Here's how this is going to go. Brick, Tiri, you're on Team Ship. Brick, keep the repairs rolling. Tap Tiri if you need her to bully them and keep them going. You can give them as much of our money as we have right now. I may have alluded that we had the funds to pay it all,” I told them.
“But we’re still short, aren’t we?” Tiri asked.
"I don't know, you're the businesswoman, Tiri. You know the good excuses from the bad. Just keep them working until we get the funds," I told her.
The green-haired kikai bobbed her head. "I can do that."
"Good. Meanwhile"—I smiled at Violet and Lily—"the three of us are going to go pay a visit to Perez. Sitting and waiting around is just going to make us all nervous. Let's get out there and be a bit proactive, and"—I smirked—"maybe we can find some of the money we're missing for the ship repairs."
"I wasn't aware they just left money lying on the ground like that," Lily said.
I stared at her for a moment, trying to figure out if she was being serious, which ended when her face broke into a smirk that hinted at danger.
"I'll keep my eyes open. We'll surely find something if we look hard enough. Maybe there’ll be good loot from the guards," she said.
"That's not what we should be doing." Violet grimaced.
"Oh, I'm sorry, are we supposed to just sit around and let them come at us without any retribution?" Lily spun on her.
"Violence is not the answer," Violet retorted.
I lifted an eyebrow and knew what I was about to say was a cheap shot, but I said it anyway. "If you'd prefer, I can leave you behind on this one. I was thinking both you and Lily would be best, but I'm sure Lily is completely capable of handling all of this for me herself."
"Yeah," Lily said. "Why don't you stay back?" The way she said the words was clearly a challenge.
I did my best to suppress a smile. Lily was playing into what I wanted, even if what I wanted was to get Violet involved.
For that, I counted it as a significant success when it came to Lily working with me to get Violet to come along.
She could have been far colder to the other woman, or she could have just let it be and not antagonize her.
Lily’s push was going to drive Violet straight into joining, and Lily knew that.
"No, it's probably best that I go." Violet crossed her arms. "After all, if he thinks it would be better with both of us, then it's probably for a good reason."
Lily sniffed and crossed her arms while turning her head, seeming to understand that she had to continue to seem unhappy or risk Violet catching on to what she was doing.
"I suppose it's up to you how aggressive you want to be," I said to Violet, "but I do think at the very least we need to get answers from Perez."
"Yes, that would be wonderful. I would take great joy in extracting those answers." Lily nodded.
"I assume that was him who showed up at the very end, only to run away scared," I said, turning to the group for their opinion.
"The golden shuttle? I agree. That reeks of what little we know of him thus far." Brick crossed all four of his arms. "That he's a grogax taking advantage of his own people is disgusting."
"Yes, well, we'll deal with him when the time comes," I reassured Brick. "Speaking of, how are you?"
Brick grunted. "I'll be fine. The lessons are helpful"—he glanced out the corner of his eyes at Tiri—"and having something more meaningful in my life is, too."
"Just be careful," I warned. "Someone like Perez, who seems to lack a conscience, could be more dangerous than we realized."
We were lucky that Finnegan valued his own life so much and that his instincts told him that Lily was so dangerous.
I could only imagine how much trouble we would have been in if he had done something like actually shoot down a shuttle with Tiri in it, or worse, somehow planted explosives on our ship.
I shook my head, dismissing those concerns.
It hadn't happened, and that was going to have to be enough for the moment.
No, I needed to focus on what happened next, to be proactive and not let him keep us on the back foot.
I cleared my throat. "Melgara, I want you to keep doing your research, as well as making sure we're set on the necessary supplies.
Given the pressure that already seems to be applied via stopping our repairs, I don't think they're going to make this easy, and I'd like to be prepared for a siege if need be or simply have enough resources to get out of here and onto our next destination. "
I smiled over at Lily. "If push comes to shove, I know we'll be safe in the ship with Lily." My confidence in Lily made her smile wide.