“Where’s my stockman?” I mumbled to no one in particular. Which gave me all the answer such questions usually get: none.

  We were in a cell. I hadn’t expected that, although the cuffs and riot-geared marines should have been a hint. At least they removed the cuffs before locking us up.

  The Raist’s cells were quite nice. Not luxurious but definitely at the top end of the scale. Four wall-mounted bunks with mechanical soft-springs adjusting to our body shapes. Almost as good as the pilot couches in the Bucket. Wall-mounted sanitary facility, water dispenser, food dispenser warning that any use would be charged to our accounts, privacy field surrounding a corner with a wall-mounted toilet.

  No shower, but there was a small med scanner, also wall-mounted, that sprayed my lips with blood clotters and dropped a pair of painkillers in my hand. The pills had tiny smiling faces engraved on them.

  I considered keying something to eat from the dispenser but dismissed the idea. This was a one-vendor cell, and monopoly is the mother of price gouging.

  “Now what?” I said.

  “Thank you,” Maia said. “To both of you.”

  “No need to thank us,” I mumbled, my mouth going numb. The clotting spray smelled of alcohol-based antiseptic, and the analgesic in it made my face feel cold.

  “I’ll take thanks,” Hao said with a wince. I helped her to the med scanner, propping her up. It was hard, her armpit being at my head-height. Maia came over and held her on the other side, and we managed to engage the med scanner. It beeped and spit out a handful of smiling pills. Hao put most of them in her pocket.

  “So,” I said, after we all collapsed into individual bunks. I felt lost in mine. The bunks were built on a scale that’d let Hao sleep comfortably. “Ideas?”

  “Bash someone’s skull in,” Hao said. “We shouldn’t be in here. We were attacked.”

  “Someone will figure that out eventually,” I said. “Look through the security camera footage. Might even yield us damages.”

  “Unlikely,” Maia said, her voice back to its normal soft strength. “The non-liability clauses in the docking contracts were quite specific.”

  “You read those?” I said. I kept forgetting that she was a trade-law specialist as well as a logistics engineers. And gorgeous. Which made it crudmuckingly easy to forget, sometimes.

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  “Of course,” Maia said. “Haven’t you?”

  “Too busy flying,” I said, remembering her last jibe. “And warding.”

  “I still think we should bash someone,” Hao said. “This isn’t fair.”

  “I’ll take that as a bad joke,” Maia said, her voice sharp enough to spice hot sauce. My lips twitched. It was good to see someone else be her target.

  “Definitely,” I said. “I lost my hat.”

  My face was pleasantly numb. Even the tip of my tongue was numb were I’d gotten a bit of spray on it. Likely, everything would hurt tomorrow, but for now, all I wanted to do was sleep.

  Had to be some calming drugs in the med scanner’s mix. I didn’t even miss my stockman. Someone would pick it up, and deliver it to us. Trade fleets were big on property. But I felt sleepy. I jerked my head, whipping it from side to side.

  “What are you doing,” Hao said, worried.

  “Trying to shake myself awake,” I said. “Old trick I picked up. Jerk your head, and you jerk away the sleepiness for a minute.”

  “Sounds silly,” Maia said. “We’ll need to wait until someone lets us out. You could sleep during that time.”

  “Not likely,” I said. “We sit here waiting, the other side is building its case against us.”

  “What case?” Hao said. “They attacked us.”

  “Which is a dumb thing to do, unless you have a plan,” I said. “We’re new here. We haven’t had the time to make enemies. Our trans-space validation codes are legitimate.”

  I said the last for the benefit of whomever was listening in. I had no illusions about privacy in the brig of a free trade vessel.

  “Your point?” Maia said.

  “We were selected,” I said. “Because we’re new, or we’re on the wrong ship, or we’re small enough to take down, or big enough to make a good distraction.”

  “Killing someone isn’t a distraction,” Hao said, which was a valid point. That cosh heading for my face had some major strength behind it. Enough to crack my wards.

  Without the wards, I would have been killed, or severely injured. But if they wanted us dead, our attackers would have used guns, or knives. Hitting someone with a weighted sock wasn’t the way to kill them.

  I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that I knew what was going on.

  “They knew we had wards,” I said. “That kid at the load master’s station must have sold us out.”

  “The kid whom you handed all our money?” Hao growled. “Of all the crudmucking things...”

  Which was another valid point. My stomach agreed, for it growled. The memory of creamy custard clouded my thoughts. I pushed it away with the memory of high prices.

  “Our funds are in bonded storage,” Maia said. “We still have the codes and the signature flimsy. Don’t you?”

  Hao patted a zipped-up pocket.

  “Not letting it out of my hands,” she said.

  “Which would indicate that our funds weren’t the cause for this incident,” Maia said.

  “What was, then?” I said.

  “I do not know,” she replied. “And I dislike mysteries.”

  “Nothing’s a mystery on a trade vessel,” I said. “It’s only a question of how much solving it will cost, and whether we can afford it.”

  Hao nodded at that. Maia gave me a quizzical look.

  “You intend to bribe someone?” she said.

  “I am,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Whoever hears us, and comes knocking,” I replied.

  She didn’t reply for a second.

  “You believe someone will have heard us, and is coming to claim their prize money?”

  I didn’t reply. Instead, I hauled myself upright, thought about giving her a grin, remembered my split lips, and pointed at the door.

  As if on cue, it slid aside, revealing a quartet of Raist marines with guns drawn.

  Not quite what I had expected.