The Bucket docked hard, the clang of the clamps traveling through her hull. Crudmunging loaders. Almost made me wish for a proper port authority.

  Not that there would be one. The free trade fleets were free because they didn’t follow regulations.

  They also didn’t follow common courtesy.

  “Crud, Bucket,” the load master said. Sounded young. Very young for such a position. “You want to crack my hold with that ugly skiff of yours?”

  “Go void yourself, Raist,” I said, my mouth acting on its own. Nobody called the Bucket a skiff. She was a genuine Mino Starworks Javelin, the finest light hauler a reasonable amount of money could buy. “My flying was smooth. You want to nag, nag your clamper.”

  “That would be me, Bucket,” the young voice said. “You got a problem?”

  Now I had, but I wasn’t going to say as much.

  I leaned back in my pilot’s couch, letting the soft, form-fitting seat absorb my tension. I felt like burping. The dinner I’d made had used up our last produce before it spoiled. Now the cockpit smelled of fried onions, and their gastrointestinal by-products. It left the recently repaired ventilation system struggling again. Good thing the load master wasn’t here.

  Annoying the load master on a free trader was almost as bad as annoying one of the captains, and we couldn’t afford to annoy anyone.

  We had too little money, no contacts, and needed to buy more spare parts and assembly machines than we could afford. About the only advantage we had was that no one in the Thirteenth Quadrant Trade Fleet Conglomerate knew us.

  Also meaning that they’d all try to scam us.

  Not rob us, trade fleets being very big on personal freedom and property law, but skim a few points of the top. A few hundred grams lost here, a few hundred there, and before you knew it, you were running with half of what you came for, and enough promissory notes left behind to make sure you could never come back.

  Crud.

  Outside the cockpit’s tempered quartz viewports, trade fleet operations flowed like dancers in a historical drama vid. Lines of cargo containers floated across the void, hauled by small, one-man skiffs. Docking lights blinked on the numerous haulers and passenger craft clamped to the trade fleet’s huge vessels. The lights made the fleet look like a star field.

  Wonder how many of those ships were as desperate as we? Likely a good chunk. People clustered where they felt safe.

  Trade fleets kept piracy to a minimum within their sphere of firepower, and they frown on slavery. Dock, and you’re part of their jurisdiction, with all their protections. Which was a good thing, because we needed all the friends we could get.

  Like the load master on a trade fleet vessel. Who’d just asked if we’d had a problem with him.

  “Nothing a small rebate won’t cure,” I replied, keeping my voice as cheeky and mirthful as I could. He’d sounded young, but not brash, more of a troublemaker than someone who’d take real offense. Make him think it was a joke, and keep the conversation going at the same time. The load master wouldn’t unclamp us as long as we were talking. I hoped.

  “Dream on,” Young Voice said. “Should charge you twice, for that.”

  “Try, and I’ll ram a plasma cannon down your throat,” I said, still keeping my voice light and joking.

  Bad idea. I’d fallen into the strutting banter we’d used at the Academy, letting my mouth do the talking. My brain belatedly interfered, shutting me up.

  No way of knowing what sort of armor the Raist had, but in close, with the Bucket docked, my plasma cannons could burn through their hull.

  Hopefully, he wouldn’t take the threat seriously, or we’d find out how good their point defenses were.

  Of course, my going rogue on them wouldn’t do crud. The Raist was a big ship, her hull blotting out the stars, kilometers and kilometers of it stretching away in all directions, a wall of steel, studded with docking bays, ships, and the occasional gun turret.

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  And the trade fleet continued past the Raist, ship after ship, connected by accordion tubes dozens of meters wide, flimsy-looking due to the scale of the ships. Lights moved through the tubes. Crew, cargo, and customers, daring the cold of deep space in a thin tube.

  Anything for profit.

  “Do that, and I will double your charges, Bucket,” Young Voice said, matching my tone perfectly. I muted my pickup and let out a sigh of relief. Of course he wouldn’t have taken my comment seriously. Attacking a trade fleet was a bad idea. Even the Syndicate pirates didn’t do it much. A customer firing on a fleet was beyond stupid.

  The free trade fleets lived by their trade rules, an archaic, constantly changing assembly of laws and regulations that shifted with each ship arriving or departing. The only constant was the extreme amount of money, time, and favors a wronged trade fleet would spend in order to get revenge, the faster and bloodier the better. Cross them at your own risk.

  Maybe baiting one of the load masters hadn’t been such a good idea.

  “Equalize pressure and open your airlock when you’re ready,” Young Voice said, suddenly all business and professionalism.

  “Copy that, Raist,” I said, then, trying to smooth things over, added. “Bring your wares because I’m bringing my money.”

  This time Young Voice laughed.

  “We hear you, Bucket. Raist out.”

  The clamps tightened, the whine of their engines traveling through the Bucket’s metal, making the hull sing, a low, fading hum that brought me peace.

  I generally liked the trade fleets. Multi-kilometer tangles of cargo haulers and system craft, ships always coming and going. You never knew whom you’d meet, except that it would be new people. No one knew you on a trade fleet, no one hunted you. Some of the best places I’d been in space were hooked up to a trade fleet. So were some of the worst.

  “Is this wise, captain?” Hao said. “Antagonizing the port authority, I mean.”

  I could sense her eyebrow rising without looking. It would be the left one, I wagered. She reserved the right one for when I did something truly stupid. Her mannerisms were growing on me. I might even find her insolent eyebrows endearing one day.

  That day was still far off. I preferred her eyebrows to stay where they were, as bushy worms guarding her too-blue eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, stretching in the spacious quarters of the Bucket’s flight deck. “I know the traders. They don’t take offense the way Syndics do. Crud, it might even score us a few points with them. Which would make them less inclined to study the markers on the Bucket’s trans-space validation codes.”

  Which we’d created ourselves, with the help of the best crypto-analysts on the Belithain. Our codes stated that we were a small-time trading operator out of Rimont Station and were as fake as a three-headed goat. But hopefully no one aboard the Raist had ever seen a goat.

  “I’d defer to the captain’s judgment,” Hao said, “but the captain has been known to be a voidmunging crud-skull. With respect, of course.”

  Which, for Hao, was respect. She hadn’t tried to brain me with the crowbar that habitually hung at her belt.

  Still, I found her remark irritating enough to stretch higher. My fingers brushed the ceiling, my shoulders popped. All to pay Hao back for the eyebrow. The cockpit was spacious for me, cramped for her.

  Hao was two heads taller than I. Even with her beige, surgically clean, co-pilot’s couch mounted almost at floor level, she hit her head on the ceiling at regular intervals.

  The cockpit now sported thick black ribbons of spray-on, self-setting packing foam over its most aggressively protruding spars. If we ever lost gravity and found ourselves floating uncontrollably, we’d be quite safe.

  “Hao’s right,” a soft voice said, right by my ear.

  Maia. Silent as a ghost, gorgeous as the night sky. Face impassive as the Dromoni protege she’d been for years, before signing on as the chief logistics engineer and supply chain expert aboard the Belithain. When I was flying solo, I’d had pleasurable fantasies about moments like these, two beautiful women sharing the Bucket with me.

  Of course, I hadn’t imagined them ganging up on me, and smacking me around with reminders of duty, unwise choices, and our shared mission.

  Maia’s lips curled a fraction of a centimeter upward, as if she’d read my mind. I wouldn’t be surprised if she did, her social skills being honed to a knife’s edge.

  “Do I even need to say it?” she said.

  “Please don’t,” I replied. “Hao’s already given me an eyebrow.”

  “Did not,” Hao said. “Although he deserved it. Waging war on the port authority.”

  “Trade fleets don’t have port authorities,” Maia said gently.

  “Really?” Hao said.

  “I said that!” I interrupted.

  That got me a cold look. Two of them.

  “Stick to flying and warding,” Maia said. “Those are the things you’re good at. Are we even allowed to board?”

  “I told you I’d secure us a berth,” I said.

  “He told them we had kilotons of helion to spend,” Hao said, shaking her head sadly, and rolling her too-blue eyes.

  “Men,” Maia said, shaking her head in sympathy, and rolling her huge, midnight-dark eyes.

  I didn’t roll anything. I was a put-upon species.

  “We’re docked,” I said. “We’re allowed to board. Let’s get our credits and our shopping list and trade before someone figures out a way to cheat us.”

  This time Hao raised her right eyebrow.

  “Cheat you, you mean,” she said.

  “Hard not to do,” Maia agreed. “Jake’s such an inviting target.” She gave me a sweet smile, turned with swift grace, and flowed out of the cockpit. Hao followed her, with less grace but more force. They could have been assassin and marine, instead of purser and mechanic.

  “Come on, Captain,” Hao yelled from the Bucket’s main corridor, the steel walls giving her voice an echo. “We’re wasting time.”

  So much for my pleasurable fantasies. But at least I had my guns.

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