The Bucket shone. Not only shone, but smelled of polish, steel wool, lemon detergent, the wet, pungent odor of a mushroom farm.

  “Mushrooms?” I said.

  My leather coat weighted down my shoulders, the bullet holes patched with freshly grown leather chemically darkened to match the coat’s old appearance.

  “A whole bed,” Hao said. “And improved hydroponics. We’ve even got a fish farm.”

  Which would have to go when we reached the Belithain. The weight of several hundred cubic meters of water would mean percents shaved off the Bucket’s top speed. But until then, I had an inkling for fresh fish, fried with bread crumbs, black pepper, and garlic. I’d seen the labels on the crates of spices in the mess. The trip back would be quite nice.

  “That’s some generosity on the Raist’s account,” I said.

  “Not entirely,” came a determined, older voice from the open airlock. “Permission to come aboard, Captain?”

  “Permission granted,” I said, “with apologies for threatening to shoot you, Major.”

  “Call me Caramon,” uncle Caramon said. “With apologies of our own. Captain Radell sends greetings.”

  Meaning that the matter of our fight with the slavers, and any damage we’d caused to the Raist, had gone all the way to the heads of the founding families, and they were willing to overlook any harm, if we were willing to do the same.

  I definitely was. I held out my fist to Major Caramon, and he bumped it. His knuckles were rough, a fighter’s hand.

  He looked a lot less threatening than he had on the tribunal, though, an older man with a slim, white beard. Shorter than Hao, taller than me. An older, wiser version of Young Voice. Laugh wrinkles around his mouth. I hadn’t noticed those during the tribunal.

  “Thank you for the mushrooms and fish,” I said.

  “Don’t thank me,” he said. “Those were paid for with the proceeds from the Ladrian conglomerate.”

  I raised my eyebrow, doing a credible imitation of Hao. The Raist had seized the slaver’s ship, and everything on it. Major Caramon noticed my eyebrow.

  “The ship was confiscated with all resources,” he said in explanation. “Damages for slave-taking of a family member.”

  Which they likely hadn’t intended, if the Ladrians had thought about it. Probably they’d taken Young Voice in order to get the codes to the bonded storage locker. That’s what I’d have done in their situation.

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  Still stupid.

  “You wouldn’t know why the conglomerate picked on us?” I said.

  Lots of bad possibilities there. If they were Syndicate pirates that connected the dots between the Bucket and the debacle on Remba, or the void wyrm that hid on the Belithain...

  “They had a cracked list of trans-space code validates,” Major Caramon said.

  Hao whistled behind me, and I had to agree. That was a big thing for a slaver to have.

  “We’re investigating it,” Caramon said, “with the aid of the Federal Navy. Which is sending a carrier group in support. We’ll correct any obvious errors in the code base we see, of course.”

  Meaning that they’d ignore the Bucket’s fake codes for now, but we shouldn’t be here when the Feds arrived.

  “Understood,” I said. “We’ll be leaving shortly. If you would be kind enough to carry a message for me?”

  “To Davan?” Caramon said.

  “Yes,” I said. “How is he?”

  I was surprised that he hadn’t been here. I’d have liked to offer him dinner, if we could afford it.

  “Healthy and obnoxious,” Major Caramon said. “And likely heading this way.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’d like to see him before we go.”

  “Don’t live to regret it,” Caramon replied, which I found strange.

  The explanation came minutes later, when Young Voice yelled for permission to come aboard.

  “Granted,” I said.

  He came in, a pair of float-pallets in his wake.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  “My luggage,” Young Voice said with a crudmucker grin. “I’m hoping to sign on.”

  For the second time in less than an hour, I gave a member of the Radell family a raised eyebrow.

  “How so?” I said.

  Young Voice held out his com, tapping away. My com beeped with a connection request.

  “My skill summary,” Young Voice said. “I’m a fully licensed loader’s mate, and I’ve got certificates in navigation, economics, and trade.”

  He kept glancing past me, down the length of the Bucket’s main corridor. Like he was waiting to see someone.

  Of course. Maia.

  I glanced at Major Caramon, gave a slight jerk of my head in Young Voice’s direction. The Major shook his head discretely, then spread his arms with an apologetic look on his face.

  Fools and dreamers. There were more of them in the galaxy than just me.

  “Sorry, kid,” I said, reading Major Caramon’s not-so-subtle hint. The family didn’t want Young Voice gone. “If you’d been a navigator, or maybe a marine, I might have considered it. For now, I don’t have the position.”

  He reacted like I’d have gut-punched him, folding in on himself. It lasted for all of five seconds before he perked up.

  “Hello, Davan,” Maia said, sneaking up behind me. “How nice of you to come see us off.”

  “Yes, maam,” Young Voice said, unconsciously straightening to attention.

  “Goodbye,” Maia said, shutting down any hopes he might have held. “It was nice meeting you.”

  Then she leaned in, and kissed him on the cheek.

  Young Voice paled, started to collapse. Major Caramon caught him, led him out of the airlock.

  “I think I’ll be the one un-docking you today,” he said.

  “Much appreciated,” I replied, lightly tapping my fist to my chest in salute. He nodded in return, extracted Young Voice from the Bucket and keyed the airlock closed behind them.

  I collected Hao and Maia, headed for the cockpit. The docking clamps released us with barely a shudder, the star field outside the tempered-quartz view ports starting to turn.

  “Home,” I said, sitting down in my pilot’s couch.

  “Home,” Hao and Maia echoed.

  I gently fed power into the warpstone engines, tilting the void and letting the trade fleet fade behind us.