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When the freighter Mnemosyne's Orphan is wrecked, first mate Cory Messenger turns to the help of the starship's two canine mechanics — for, despite mutual suspicion and prejudice, they can only count on each other...

Figure it's time to start the year off right, and by "off right" I mean this is a smutty space salvage story heavily inspired by one of my favorite folk songs, Stan Rogers' "The Mary Ellen Carter" because of course it is. This is the last story I have outlined or conceived of for the moreauverse, written in parallel with _The Mighty Wind Arises, and includes some characters from_ Steel and Fire and Stone as well._ Also some dogs sing "Sloop John B" in dogspeak. Basically what I'm saying is it's very... Me. So give thanks to :iconSpudz: for, uh, fixing it to be less Me._

Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute -- as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.

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Rise Again , by Rob Baird

Lights aglow in challenge to the deep black all 'round her, the Mnemosyne's Orphan hummed onward. She was bound for Carver's Landing with a cargo of God-only-knew-what, twelve days out and eight to go, and on her bridge the captain half-dozed through eyes glazed with daydreams of wealth.

So it always went but, as far away from the bridge as one could get, Kina loved it anyway.

He was a mechanic, though his paws were too dark to show the nicks and scars and grime of honest work. Those who saw the shepherd took him for a soldier. He had never served — born and raised a slave, like so many of his kind. A longshoreman on the metal docks of Ruby Points, and then a mechanic, and now...

Now, those black paws left a faint trace of grease in the white fur of his partner. The colliedog would find it when he woke, and shake his head, and chide Kina fondly. Kina would pretend to be terribly sorry. He would offer a kiss in penance. The kiss would be accepted...

He smiled to think of it.

But they woke instead to alarms — and woke sharply, jumping to their feet, for there were no good alarms on a ship. The sleep had been banished instantly. Kina was already pulling on his pants, growling as the claws of his feet caught on the denim.

“What is it?" Bob — that was the collie's name, Bob Silverberg — was shrugging on his jacket with much the same difficulty.

“Don't fucking know," Kina growled, hopping as he shoved his feet into heavy work boots. “Feel anything?"

For a moment, Bob paused, and the collie tilted his head and closed an eye. “We're listing."

Shit. Kina kicked the hatch open — Bob had an old war injury; wasn't supposed to strain his back — and the two of them made their way aft, to the engine room that was their home. Kina pulled the sound-powered telephone down from the wall. “Engineering here. What's going on?"

Captain Wright's voice sounded thick and slurred, as if poured through stiffening gruel. “I 'unno yet. Alarms goin'. Lock the reactor down 'til I know better..."

Kina ran his claws back, through mahogany hair. “Aye, cap'n." He hung up the phone, and turned to the control panel, pulling the heavy levers that throttled the Orphan's fusion reactor. “Bob?"

The collie was staring at a big flat-panel display. “Pressure drop forward of frame 30. We're down four kilopascals in the cargo hold. Life support system's running at full blast..."

“Hull breach?"

“Looks like it. Pressure doors are sealed, though..."

“Hope there wasn't anybody there..."

“Me too," Bob frowned. “Five kilopascals. Six. We've got to be looking at something big, Kinnich."

A major hull breach was every sailor's worst nightmare. If the support systems couldn't keep ahead of the pressure drop, they'd have to suit up to fix it. Kina could already feel his chest tightening; the claustrophobia of the suit grabbing at his limbs... “Call it in?"

Kina had asked, on occasion, what Bob had done in the army; the collie had never answered. But he worked with swift, martial precision, and now he was shaking his head. “Bigger fish to fry. I've got no sensor readings forward of the hold."

The shepherd's veins froze. “What?"

“I'm rebooting, hold on." Lights on the panel flickered; diagnostic code started scrolling, faster than either dog could see. “Sound-powered phones are working, but I've got no sensors or command readings. Shit, Kinnich, I think we've lost the main data bundle."

Signals from the computer to the bridge, from the bridge to the engine bay, from anywhere to anywhere, ran through the cabling threaded through the ship's keel like a nervous system. “Try again?"

“Dead."

“We can't shut the atmosphere generator down."

The generators were forward of the cargo hold; their controls were in the engine bay with Kina and Bob. “That's right."

“We'll wind up venting all our air into space."

“That's also right. Down thirty kilopascals now."

Shit! Shit, shit, shit. Kina reached for the phone again. “Bridge, this is the engine room. We've got no data links with your half of the ship. I think we're looking at a major hull breach in the cargo hold, probably with some systems damage — we'll be out of air in thirty minutes, maybe."

“Fifteen. At most," Bob offered.

“Fifteen, cap."

The voice that answered was not Captain Wright but Cory Messenger, their first mate. Cory, at least, was sober: “Can you fix it?"

Kina swallowed. He did not want to say the words, but... “No. Not in time. We'll have to abandon ship."

“Can't do that, I'm afraid."

“What?"

“We're in an uncontrolled roll, and accelerating. Helm's not responding, but I guess you know why. Two minutes from now we won't be able to launch the lifeboats. Five minutes and it'll overpower the inertial dampeners. Fifteen minutes; we'll be dead."

“I'll see what I can do."

“Be quick about it. Asphyxiate or be squashed — I don't much fancy that choice." Cory had a dry deadpan about him; he'd been shipping out even longer than the two dogs.

“Yes, sir," Kina said, and set the phone back on the hook with shaking paws. “One of the thrusters is locked. We have to shut it down. Immediately."

“It's Dorsal-Double-C-2," Bob answered, almost immediately. One of the thrusters on the port side of the ship, towards the stern. “Fuel flow's off the charts."

“Well, shut it down."

The collie's paws, deceptively dainty, tapped at the computer console. “Not answering. Positive return from the constrictor servos, but it doesn't seem to be actuating..."

Kina swore, and looked into the mess of machinery beyond the panels. “Come on, then!" he barked, and vaulted over the railing, sprinting back to the beating heart of their wounded ship.

As the collie had said, the fuel-flow meter was pegged. Some final, dying impulse from the severed nerves had pushed its throttle well beyond any safe limits. Now, as he looked around for a way to shut it down, a desperate shout froze him in place: “Kina! It's running away!"

The thruster was demanding more fuel than the lines could supply: in its hunger, it was forcing them open wider, overstressing the pipes and valves. That was why they had not been able to stop it — its need was greater than the resistance that the constrictors could supply.

There was a manual control at the fuel manifold, but he had no way to turn it. Another oath, and the sound of Bob Silverberg landing far more heavily than Kina himself had done distracted him — but by the time he could ask where the hell the dog had been, Bob was already pressing the heavy spanner into Kina's paw.

He hooked the tool around the valve, and the pair leaned their weight into it, drawing on all the mechanical leverage they could. The valve did not budge. They could not have more than a minute left — Kina tried again, his muscles straining, swearing with the effort of it.

Then he looked up, saw the ice threading its way back up the line from the valve, and understood.

Heat water enough, and it boils into steam. Cool it, and it freezes. But the same is true in reverse: expand a liquid into a gas, and it becomes colder. The thrusters were drawing liquid fuel from the tanks faster than it could be warmed, and the lines had frozen solid. The valve would not be moved.

And they were out of time left to fix it. Back where the fuel left the tank, before the manifold, it might still be warm enough for the cut-off valve to work. But accessing it was a five-minute job, and that was five more than they had.

He could already feel the acceleration tugging at him as the ship's movements exceeded what they could compensate for. Wild-eyed and panicking, he glanced to Bob. The collie met his gaze.

“The manifold!"

“What?"

Cursing, Bob grabbed the spanner, and swung as hard as he could. It crashed off the solid manifold with a terrifying clang. The dog was already swinging again — and a third time, before he doubled over with a yelp and careened to the floor, teeth gritted in pain.

Kina could practically see a stopwatch, ticking down in his mind. He picked up the heavy metal tool, and swung with all his might. The impact sent a jarring agony shooting up through his bones — but the manifold had given slightly, so he ignored it.

The next time, the metal split, and burst open — there was a terrible roar as the thruster suddenly starved of fuel, and then a deafening silence when it shuddered to a halt. Back at the fuel tank, the cut-off valve had detected the shattered manifold and clamped shut immediately.

They were safe.

Bob's ears were back, and Kina could see he was trying not to whimper. The shepherd pulled him carefully to his feet. “Come on," he said for the second time. But he would have to be the collie's legs, his spine; his strength.

It sometimes seemed that it had always been that way. When he'd first met the collie, Bob was serving in the Colonial Defense Authority, one of the private military forces that protected the Yucatan Alliance's citizens and corporations. He'd been doing it for years, in spite of an old injury — a broken back that had never properly healed.

Kina had been the one to convince him to leave the service and try out for a freighter. The shepherd felt strongly that this had been the right decision; CODA wasn't good for any dog, let alone one as vulnerable as his collie. Between Bob's pension and Kina's mechanical work they'd been able to get by until Sean Wright took them on the Mnemosyne's Orphan.

They'd been getting by ever since. Bob eventually came around, although he still had his moments. Despite the pain in his back, when it acted up, he was always going on about his time in an armored company. This battle and that battle and such-and-such campaign on whatever planet. They blended together for Kina, who put up with them because he loved the gentle colliedog in spite of his interminable stories.

And when his strength failed him, Kina carried his mate willingly. Now, for example; now he helped the dog limp down flickering corridors to where the rest of the crew was preparing the escape pods. As soon as he saw the pair, Captain Wright beckoned them closer.

“That's it. You're the last of us. Guess we'll take three pods. Mary, you an' me an' Nunez. Uh, and Pat, I guess. Joe, take one with McCall and French and Kessler. Cory, take Bob and Kina."

“Cap," Cory grumbled.

“I said," Sean pointed a wavering finger. “Take Bob and —“

“I heard you."

Kina didn't know what Cory's problem was, but in seven years of service he had never warmed to either of the two canines. The lifeboat was not particularly cramped, but Messenger made a point of scooting until his back was up against the curved wall.

Twenty minutes passed in silence. Finally, Kina spoke up. “Radio?"

Cory rolled his eyes. Then, slowly, the human reached up to the overhead controls, and flicked the radio on. Sean Wright's accent filled the little pod: “—day, mayday. Cargo ship Mnemosyne's Orphan, cargo ship Mnemosyne's Orphan, cargo ship Mnemosyne's Orphan."

The name, repeated over and over, was unwieldy — then again, they had never expected to hear it like that. Wright seemed to have sobered up, not that it mattered; the damage was long since done.

“Our position is grid hotel mike three two five. Six one zero two by five five zero one by zero one niner zero. Shift four primary bearing five niner by one one at fifteen kilometers per second. We've abandoned ship. Eleven souls have taken to escape pods."

Kina could still remember the day they had first reported aboard. He had never left his home planet, except sedated in a cargo hold from whatever colony had birthed him. He had never traveled, and now here he was — boarding the Orphan, with her meteoroid-scarred hull and her wear-scarred engines and her life-scarred captain, his hair already grey and ragged.

But then their lives had been full of promise. The worst of Bob's chronic pain had not yet come; the collie was grinning, feathery tail all a-wag and eyes bright. Wright had looked at their papers, and shrugged, and told them they were free to replace his departing chief engineer. And he'd given them an advance on wages.

Kina recalled it as though it was yesterday. And when he closed his eyes, he heard —

“Another round?" The bartender's eyebrow was lifted.

“What could it hurt?" Kina asked, and flashed a grin.

“Who'dya sign with?" The harbor-girl who'd slunk up to the bar was still young, pretty enough for her age. “You on the By Jove? The Third Chance Lucky?"

“Captain Wright. Mnemosyne's Orphan," Bob clarified, over Kina's shoulder. The girl sucked in a sharp breath. “What?"

“Well," she shook her head. “Everybody's gotta start somewhere."

“What's that mean?" Kina asked, spinning to face her — dizzy, buzzed with the strong local beer. “E'rybody gotta start somewhere. Hmph."

“Don't listen to her," grumbled the bartender. “Wright always brings his people home."

The rat-trap hotel was twenty a night, but Bob paid triple for one with a yellowed window that looked out on the loading docks. Centuries before, ships had actually traveled on the water — now they just floated there, taking advantage of the buoyancy before it would come time to rocket skyward.

All of them had names; stories. The Orphan had its own, and Kina was the most excited he'd ever been to be joining them. Well — almost the most. There was the time he'd first met the dog now padding up behind him... he turned, and caught Bob's muzzle in a deep kiss.

The collie did nothing to protest, and he seemed to share his lover's high spirits when the other dog pulled away, licking his nose sloppily with a wide grin. “Can you believe it? This is it, Ralla! This is where it starts!"

A twenty thousand ton freighter — “double-sawbuck," in the local parlance — she hadn't looked like much on the docks but Kina fell in love with her at once for what she represented. She was more than a mere starship. Kina saw in her the promise of a better future for the both of them.

Over the next seven years they would live that life to the fullest. It wasn't always exciting, and it wasn't always fun; the crew could be frosty, and the hours were long. But nearly every trip saw a new port of call, with new people to meet and new sunrises over new horizons.

He loved it. He was born to it, and whenever he had his doubts he thought back to that evening in the hotel room, and the feeling of the collie's fingers knitting with his own as they kissed, and swore they would make the most of whatever came, wherever it took them, whenever it ended...

“— andoned ship. Eleven souls have taken to escape pods."

Through the thick plexiglass, he could see the Mnemosyne's Orphan, her navigation lights still burning against the dark, fading into the shrouded distance of space and memory. With her fusion drive on and only the emergency systems for it to power, they would blaze unseen for centuries.

***

“What do you suppose we were carrying?"

“Secret. McCall wouldn't even tell me." Not that Cory had really pried that much; Jasper McCall was the senior cargoman, and he could do whatever he liked.

“Not even you?" Mary Wise, who had been their navigator, seemed a little surprised. She tipped the bottle of beer back, taking a long pull. “Figured you guys were close."

“We were, but... I never asked," Cory shrugged. “I know it was secret. McCall said that Wright signed for everything himself. We were running something secret to Carver's Landing, and then we were picking up something secret here. Bound for, uh..." Through the gentle haze of three or four or five beers he tried to remember the manifest. “Eden, I think."

“Rambler's Eden? That's a prime colony. Kingdom was hurting us there wasn't even three years back. Guns, you think?"

“Maybe." Running weapons wasn't strictly legal, but who knew? “Our organic license was expired. Renewal wasn't going to come for another week, and we were leaving in a hurry..."

“Bet it was weapons. Weapons and ammo. Colonists always need that, and it pays well, and... say..." She turned, and the beer in her bottle sloshed in irritation. “You think we got hit?"

Cory Messenger was not one for such theories. It was hard to hit a moving target, harder still in deep space, and what was the point? Far more likely it was a random piece of debris, already a million to one odds.

Of course, a LIDAR set should've picked it up well in advance. To Cory's chagrin, though, Sean had not been able to swear that the Orphan's LIDAR had even been switched on. Human error was far more deadly than some sinister conspiracy.

“I think it was just luck shitting on us," he said. The sunset warmed his limbs, and he stretched out on the bench. “Bound to happen some time."

“Well, we had our close calls. Such a shame, though..."

“Aye, she was a lovely one," Cory nodded. “Could climb like nobody's business. You remember that time we skipped out of, fuck, where was it — Towson? Yeah, Towson to Catalunya. Cleared atmo with two minutes left until your license expired."

Mary rolled hazel eyes at the memory. “Wasn't my fault. Sean swore he'd sent in the paperwork. Swore it all the way to Catalunya. God, but that man could talk his way out of fuckin' anything."

“Think he's talking his way out of Lewis and Hall?" Cliff Lewis and Cynthia Hall owned the Mnemosyne's Orphan, and a handful of other ships; even Messenger had never met them, but their names were involved as solemn oaths whenever some particularly noisome regulation slid down the pipe.

“Maybe." And together they raised another toast, to the ship and her captain.

In the two months since the ship's loss, most of the crew had gradually gone their separate ways. Cory and Mary and Andy French, a loadmaster, were staying on Carver's Landing while they waited — stalking the port like gulls, watching the ships come and go.

They stayed because they wanted closure; along with Sean, they had served the longest on the old tramp ship. Sean was talking to the ship's owners; he would have the answers, and Cory answered immediately when his communicator went off with Wright's name appearing on the display.

“What's up, captain?"

“It's over," Sean said. He didn't look especially broken up about it, even in the low resolution of the communicator hologram. Indeed, he was grinning: “It's all over."

“What is?"

“Cliff and Cynthia just wrote the ship off, her and her cargo. Said insurance'll cover it, and a little bit more. They're payin' us out. Should hit your account tomorrow. Clean money."

Cory couldn't quite believe it; he shook his head. “What now, then?"

“Do what you like. Me?" On the hologram, Cory could see Sean turning to look at something off-screen. A sunset? A beach? A particularly fetching whore? “I'm retiring. It's been nice, Cory."

The money, it turned out, was not scanty — Sean owned a third of the ship, and that was split amongst everyone's shares as members of the crew. Cory had been first mate, with the second largest share after Wright.

“Enough to be comfortable for a good long while. More than a few months," Cory admitted to Mary Wise the following day. “I just can't believe they don't want to salvage her..."

“Salvage?"

“She's worth a fair amount, you know. And I mean, the damage was fixable, if we'd had time... patch the control lines, resupply the O2... wouldn't be too hard. Some EVAs, but..."

Wise snorted. “You need to count your blessings and move on, Cory. If I'd gotten that kind of payout..."

Sean, when Cory called him back, was less reserved. He'd needed to step away from the sounds of a roaring party to be audible, and when he could speak, it was to laugh: “Don't be a fuckin' loon, Cory. Just get back out there. Hell, bank the money if you can't live a little. Shit," and that hearty Irish chuckle. “Salvage."

Over the following two weeks, he went through everyone he could think of. All of the crew agreed that the Orphan had been a brave and worthy ship. None were willing to volunteer to help bring her back. Andy French, Robin Nunez; little Joe Chenoweth, the helmsman...

“C'mon, Mary," he pleaded.

“No. It's a stupid idea, Cory. You're being a dreamer."

“We can do it. It's simple. I was looking over the telemetry again and I think we could... you're ignoring me, aren't you?"

“I'm shipping out," she said, simply. “Promise Keeper."

“Jesus," Cory muttered. The Promise Keeper was a three hundred and fifty thousand ton behemoth, one of the newest ships in the Laurentian Interstellar Lines fleet. “Chief navigator?"

“Assistant, but hey. It's good for my resume."

“Résumé," he sighed. “I think it'd be better with your own ship. Something smaller. Like, say, a double-sawbuck somebody left abandoned..."

“Yeah, twenty thousand tons spinning in the middle of outer space. Really, nobody would buy into it? French?"

“Andy wants to start a business. Hope it isn't a restaurant." French had been their cook, too — for what that was worth.

“Kessler?"

Cory shook his head. “She didn't think it was so hot, either. Nobody did. Not even Pat fuckin' James, and he was high off his ass at the time. You're the last one. C'mon, Mary. For old times sake."

“You ask the engineers?"

He scoffed. “Belka and Strelka? Come off it."

Mary shrugged.

He had not asked the engineers because he did not like the engineers. They had been reasonably competent crew, after their own fashion — but it was a peculiar fashion, and not one that he desired any part of. Sean had taken some fancy to the odd pair.

Sean had not been the one to clean their fur out of the environmental filters. He hadn't been the one to sign the prescription for their special medication, or order their specially designed EVA suits, or anything else. Good workers or no, he was not interested in having anything to do with them again. “No way in hell, Mary. Be serious."

Once again she shrugged.

Two weeks later he was stepping off a passenger skiff into the cool evening of a town that called itself Hana Lanja, a town that did not seem to have any paved streets. Grass covered everything; it was soft beneath his walking shoes. The air smelled like any other coastal town; the buildings looked as they might in any other port. Only the grass was out of place — the grass, and the fact that there were no other human beings to be seen.

Cory hadn't grown up with the creatures, which the marketers called moreaus. Bipedal dogs, or cats, or rabbits, or whatever else caught the engineers' fancy. Like many — like most of any right mind, in his opinion — they seemed an inappropriate imposition on the proper order of things. There was something not quite right about them — in their accent when they talked, and in their gait, and in the way their eyes seemed just a little too sharp.

And in the way they aped humanity so shamelessly. In the company compounds, he'd heard, they wore color-coded vests or loincloths, but out here they walked around like anyone else, wearing normal clothes. They carried bags slung over their shoulder like a human might, they sat at cafés over drinks and pastry like a human might; they turned in their seats and watched the world go past like a human might.

But they were not human. They were something else, something manufactured, and there was an intrinsic falseness to their existence. Cory had asked Sean to terminate the two mechanics' contracts on more than one occasion. But they did decent work, because they'd been bred to do decent work, and Wright would hear none of it.

He checked his map, looked up at the wind-battered storefront, and checked his map again. The building wasn't labeled. “Lost?" a husky voice asked. It came from a black-furred canine, wearing blue jeans and an oversized field jacket. He was leaning against the wall of the building, next to a rusting chain-link gate, broad shoulders slumped in relaxation. A lit cigarette lazed between his stubby fingers.

“Maybe," Cory said. “I'm looking for a machine shop."

The dog narrowed his eyes; the rest of his bulk stayed motionless. “Got something you need fixed?"

“No, not exactly. I'm trying to find an old shipmate of mine. His forwarding address said he'd moved out here. I came in off the last intraplanetary — hope this is the right town. But I mean, I guess..." He looked to either side, where more of the strange creatures could be seen walking the green paths.

The thing listened to his explanation and then nodded. Before he spoke again, he lifted the cigarette to his muzzle and took a long drag from it. “Well, maybe-could help, I guess. You got a name?"

“Me or who I'm looking for? I'm —“

“Cory?" another voice asked. Kina had come to the gate. Cory and the other dog both turned at once. “Oh, yassuja, it is you. Never expected to see you again. What brings you out to Hana Lanja? You're not becoming a fisherman, are you?"

“It's not in my short-term plans, at least..."

“Øddich, this is Cory — he was one of my shipmates. Cory Messenger."

“Be sure not to shoot you," the black dog grunted.

Cory rolled his eyes. “Clever. I've never heard anything like that before."

“This is Al Bester. I call him Øddich, but, you know... nobody else does, so I'm sure he won't mind his human name. I met him through Bob. They served together."

“I'm a soldier's wife, like Kina here," Bester clarified further. “Found 'em both work when your ship went down. Damn shame, to hear them say it."

“That's part of why I'm here..."

Bester opened the gate, and called Bob over. The red collie blinked in surprise. “Mr. Messenger — ah. Wow." His ears flicked, and Cory had the impression that he was torn between years of deference and the realization that the old hierarchy was gone. That they were, though Cory hated to admit it, something like equals. “Did you just happen to be in the neighborhood?"

“No. I'm... looking for partners. In a business venture."

The machine shop was not particularly busy — actually, nothing really gave the impression that there was much haste to be found at all in Hana Lanja. Bester locked the door, and led the group down the block to a quiet café, thick with the smell of cooking.

Cory let Kina order on his behalf, in the peculiar language that the dog folk shared. When the waitress left, he tried to explain himself. He went through the data from the flight recorder, and his estimation of the budget that would be required to track the Mnemosyne's Orphan back down and fix her: “But I think we could do it. We could salvage her."

“Physically, yes." Bob Silverberg nodded. “It depends on how bad the damage from the strike was, but if the structure is sound... I've seen worse patched in the field. And I've worked in suit before."

“Would you be interested?"

“No offense, Cory, but... I don't understand why you're asking Kina and I. You never liked us much, anyway."

The waitress returned, setting down shallow bowls of water. They were not meant to be drunk from so much as lapped at, and Cory knew that his frown had not gone unnoticed. He tried to recover. “Well... you know the ship. You worked on her for years."

“Also, he asked everybody else," Bester growled, smiling thinly. “And they told him it was a stupid fuckin' idea."

Cory didn't answer, which said plenty. “Is that it?" Bob snorted. “We're the bottom of the barrel?"

“A lot of the crew was more interested in moving on, that's true," he finally admitted. “It's also true that I wasn't... always your biggest fan. I guess we can be honest, right? But you do know the ship — maybe better than anyone except Wright and me."

“Why can't you move on, too?" Kina asked, his voice softer.

“It just seems like a shame. Served on that crate for ten years and she never let us down, and... it seems strange, but I think we owe it to her. Owe it to somebody, at least."

“Just a fuckin' ship," Bester said. “Goddamn machine like anything else. Ain't cared for you; you ain't gotta care for it. People care for you. And you care for people. Or, you know. In your case, an' their case," he nodded to Kina and Bob, “I guess you don't."

“He came looking for us," Kina pointed out. He was still quiet.

His partner, Bob Silverberg, did not seem so persuaded. “Desperation does funny things to people."

“I know."

Cory wasn't certain what to say; how to make it right. Perhaps he could not. He lifted the bowl of water to his lips, and tried to drink from it, and mostly succeeded. Across the room a shaggy mutt of a dog stepped up to the microphone, paw clasped to a guitar in remarkable facsimile of a human being.

Nalsalit to al-_John B. _Ash zada halatuk di... Cory had heard the song before, he thought. In English. Na høts Nassawa nalchari'. The singer's voice was strange, and keening.

“You don't speak any Nakath-rukhat, do you, Mr. Messenger? 'Dogspeak'?"

“No," he told Kina. “I don't."

“We say that a word can have four... what is it, Bob? The word?"

“Gender."

“Four genders. Male or female; living or dead." Kina's ears flicked as the singer's voice rose into an impassioned chorus. “In our language, 'boat' is kajak. Despite what Øddich says, we think of boats as being alive."

“So do I," Cory said. “And I think we could bring this one back. The Orphan wasn't much, maybe, but... she was ours, you know?"

Kina, who looked like a German shepherd, flicked his ear once more. “Lot of memories there."

“Yeah?"

“Remember that time we lost power just after jumping into the San Ildafonso system? We'd just cleared the Tennyson Gate and we picked up that rad pulse..."

Cory Messenger shook his head. “Six hundred meters per second of delta-v left... I guess you guys were in the engine room, then..."

“Yeah, and then the collision alarm comes on —"

“And you guys get the idea to vent the main bay and use the decompression —"

“'Depressurize the cargo hold!' 'But the livestock!'"

“Fuckin' McCall. 'We don't —'"

“'Got no livestock!'" Kina finished, right with him. Jasper McCall, their senior loadmaster, had filed the Orphan's flight plan with two hundred head of cattle to cover the fact that they were running computer parts to San Ildafonso. For a moment, the two laughed; shared the moment.

“It was my idea," Silverberg added, quietly. “Learned it from a lighter pilot, back when I was driving mechs for CODA."

Cory looked at the dog. He had a friendly face, but it was tired; the red fur had begun to go white. “You were a soldier?"

“Like it did a damned bit of good," the collie muttered. “All they ever do is use you up and spit you out. All of them. It's the same everywhere..."

“Maybe this is your chance to get good, then," Messenger tried. “Look, we haven't been... I know we were never... friends. But that ship meant something to me... maybe it meant something to you. Salvage won't be easy, but I know you guys have the expertise. I have my insurance payout, and with yours..."

Bob snorted, and muttered something in guttural dogspeak.

“Ralla," Kina put his paw on the dog's arm to calm him. “We, ah... we weren't on the insurance. It was part of our contract. We weren't ever, uh, 'full' crewmembers."

Cory hadn't known that — it must've come from Wright, or maybe even from the ships owners. “Wait... really?"

“Only way we could get anybody to hire us. Us being dogs and all, even with his citizenship..."

“Which isn't worth the bytes it's stored on," Silverberg grumbled. “Never is. And some new scheme, from the people who screwed us before? No, Kinnich, I'm tired of hearing promises from them..."

Messenger now felt a little guilty, though he wasn't entirely certain why, or that he had any reason to. “Well. We could draw up a contract. I didn't intend to... cheat you..."

“Yeah," the collie rolled his eyes. “And that'll last until you decide it's easier for you to just tear it up."

“Thing is," Bester added, “we aren't exactly pups here. We've seen what one of your contracts is worth. Ralla and I both got our citizenship from our service. Told us then it'd be a new beginning. Well, shit, how'd that work out?"

Kina, the shepherd, kept his paw on Bob's arm but looked to Cory. “But... you think it could be done. If it could be... might be our ticket off here. I mean, I love Hana Lanja..."

“We have a place here," the collie interjected.

“Yes, a place, after a fashion. Because we don't really even have anything else. I'd grow old with you anywhere, Ralla, but... but I don't want to spend my life wondering if..."

“They can't be trusted." Bob lowered his head, and flattened his ears. “You know they can't be trusted."

“Can I?" his mate asked, softly. They were all, to Cory's mild surprise, still speaking English.

The collie turned, and blinked. “You, Kinnich? Of course."

“Then I think we should give it a chance. Come, janhata..."

Bob was silent. “Hey!" the singer at the bar shouted. “Hakh-_John B. _salja dhalshou! Alsaluk kalat dhaledu!" It was evidently the last chorus, for he was putting energy into it, and a few of the other moreaus at the bar were joining in. “Alinana dhalstanu — ilzheda ka kin."

“Ilzheda ka kin; kihad ursosu jankin," Ralhota Kina added his voice. “Ilhasha alkira: ilzheda ka kin."

As the polite applause started, Cory looked between the pair. Finally, seeing that Kina was not going to say anything further, Bob took a deep breath. “Ilhasha alkira. Ka kin ilzheda. I... feel broken; I desire to... return home."

“This isn't our home, jangan. That's our home. Up there." The shepherd pointed to the ceiling of the bar, but his intent was clearly far beyond. “That's where we belong. Together."

“Gully Foyle is my name," Bester suddenly intoned. The rottweiler wasn't looking at any of them, and he seemed to be dragging something up from the depths of his memory. “Terra is my nation. Deep space is my dwelling-place; the stars, my destination."

“Jangan," Kina repeated. “What do you say?"

Bob splayed his ears. His look, gazing into the bowl of water, was forlorn. “For you, Kinnich. Not for Mr. Messenger."

“For me," the shepherd agreed. “You'll do it?"

“For you. Yes. But only for you."

“Who are you having handle the salvage?" Bester asked. “You have anybody in mind?"

That provided a new complication. “No. Not exactly. Most people aren't interested in working a double-sawbuck that old. I had to promise a fair amount of money. I was, uh... sort of assuming that Mr. Silverberg and Mr. Kina would have some to kick in..."

“Welcome to our lives," Kina said with a soft smile. “Did you ask Will Vankirk?"

“Vankirk's busy until next season."

“Maggie Porter?"

“She won't take the job. Claims the Orphan is too old to be worth it. I didn't tell her about the cargo..."

That got Bester's attention. “Cargo?"

“I don't know what it was, exactly, but we were running something secret. Computer parts, weapons — something where they didn't want to pay the toll, at least. I was the first mate, and they wouldn't even tell me, Mr. Bester."

“Quick trip to the Landing, and from there to Rambler's Eden," Kina explained further. “If it was worth the speed, probably chips in defiance of the embargo. Guns from Carver's Landing to Eden, I'm sure of it... Wright had Ralla and I rigging up a weak cloak to throw off anybody who wanted to scan us."

That was more information for Cory to file away. “But I didn't want to tell Porter that, in case she got... nosy. I mean, really... the problem is that I need somebody, uh..."

“As desperate as you are," Bester finished. “Rishi, maybe."

“Rish works in platforms," Silverberg spoke up, briefly; despite his acquiescence he was clearly still not sold on the idea. “But I suppose she'd know old technology..."

“Who is 'Rish'?" Cory asked.

“Rishika Iyer. I know she's available, and I know she hasn't had work since they were all out in the Belt last year. I could put in a word." The rottweiler fidgeted with his claws, and looked like he badly wanted a cigarette. “If you really want to do this. She's out in the Rings right now, squatting on some old station she's been lookin' for a hauler for."

“Let me guess: another dog?"

Bester grunted. “No."

***

True to what the rottweiler had said, Rishika was not a dog. Instead — Cory learned after the contract was drawn up and signed, and they were waiting for her ship to clear quarantine — she was a feline, of some kind. Neither Kina nor Silverberg could provide any further clues, so Cory decided she was a panther.

Jet black, there was something in her build that spoke to a wilder heritage. Even through her velvet-soft pelt, Cory could see the strength of her muscles: Rishika looked like she could've picked up and thrown any of the other three without breaking a sweat.

It was not what Cory had expected, and not what he wanted. But he was reminded of an old Earth proverb: beggars can't be choosers. Rishika and her ship, the Svarog, were willing to do the work despite the meager pay that Messenger could offer.

Unlike the two dogs — indeed, unlike canine moreaus in general — she had a far more human build; in silhouette she might've passed for any other woman, save for the tail and her blunt muzzle. It had, perhaps, been intended by her designers to soften her impact. “I hope you're certain about these coordinates." The panther's voice, too, had a certain feminine quality to it — but it also had a very feline growl that only served to drive home her origins.

Cory was not a fan. “Yes," he answered, and handed over the computer for her inspection. “Last known coordinates, heading, and speed."

“That'll be difficult..."

“I'm sure you can handle it," Kina offered.

Rishika, who had not so much as smiled at Cory, reacted to the dog's praise with a laugh. “I hope so, yes."

Messenger spent the outbound journey and the jump in his room, spending as little time as possible with the three animals. He would have to get along with them, he knew... eventually. But there was fur everywhere, and the food that they ate was vile. None of it made him especially happy.

He sent a subspace telegram to Mary Wise, mostly complaining. Her reply came back on Promise Keeper stationary. He could hear the teasing in her voice. You're the one who wanted to do this and then, right at the end: make sure you don't get up with fleas.

There were probably fleas everywhere on the damned Svarog. Cory thought back to his time on the Orphan: the clogged air filters in the engineering bay, and the special medication they'd needed to keep on hand for the two moreau crewmembers — who shouldn't have existed in the first place.

Why weren't humans good enough? Humans had been good enough for millennia. Good enough to land on the moon, good enough to build the first jumpdrives; good enough to settle the first colonies. They hadn't needed any genetic monstrosities for that, and they weren't better off for having them.

“Come to the bridge," his intercom buzzed.

That, too, was wrong — having an animal giving him orders. So what if it was her ship? Grumbling, Cory tugged on his clothes and complied. Kina and Silverberg were already waiting.

“Radar has a contact." Rishika brought up the sensor readouts on the monitor at the front of the room. “It'll take us a couple days to come alongside. And matching her rotation will be... tricky."

“They said you could do it," Cory reminded her.

“And I can," the panther glared. “Should charge you extra."

“Should do your job."

“Maybe if you shut your flat-faced mouth, I could."

Kina stepped in between them before Cory could reply — which was probably for the best; it would not have been any more polite. “Let's... wait until after we have the ship salvaged to kill anybody, maybe. This is a four-person job..."

“Person?"

Rishika hissed at Cory.

“Four... sentient being... job..." Kina amended. “Inanu Iyer, can we begin the synchronization burn?" Silence. “Captain Iyer?" The shepherd stepped up on his tiptoes, so that he could block Rishika and Cory from seeing one another.

At last, she backed down and, growling, returned to her console. “Yes, Kina. I'll program it in."

“Thank you, inanu," he said, forcing a smile. “Mr. Messenger?"

With a displeased sigh, Cory followed the shepherd off the bridge to the corridor just outside. “Mr. Kina?"

“Do you... have a problem with Rishi?"

Yes, of course he did. But, because he was trapped on the ship with them, he tried to modulate his reply into something more diplomatic. “The same problem she has with me..."

“You don't like answering to a moreau. I know that, Mr. Messenger — but if you want to get our ship back, you're going to have to be flexible."

Cory bit his tongue. “I'll see what I can do."

Forty hours later, the Mnemosyne's Orphan filled their viewscreen. The lights were still on, and she was spinning fast enough that the bright position lamps left blurry trails in their vision.

“This piece of junk?"

Again Kina spoke up before Cory could curse at her. “It's more reliable than it looks, trust me."

“Imaging it now..." Rishika switched the camera off and brought up a false-color image of the freighter, with the resolution sharpening as the lasers swept over it again and again. “You hired me to salvage a... what is this, a South Platte-class? No, it doesn't have the dorsal modules — a Saskatchewan?"

“Third flight," Silverberg told her. “It's a third-flight Saskatchewan."

“Standard double-sawbuck tramp freighter," Cory nodded. And, a little protectively, he added: “We made some modifications, too..."

“Twenty thousand tons of ninety year old scrap metal? Preserve me." Rishika was manifestly unpleased: her tail coiled and uncoiled in lashing jerks, and he was pretty certain her claws were extended. Could moreaus do that? “Huge hole ripped in the main cargo bay — electronics are all shot to hell..."

“Why don't we skip the appraisal?"

“You would want to," she grunted to Cory. “I'm going to need to burn at least twenty percent over budget just to match rotation enough to dock. Who's paying for that?"

Cory Messenger took a few deep breaths. Not that he was any good at meditation; his voice was still sharp when he finally answered. “I will. Just do it. Christ."

He left her to her work, because it was that or start shouting, and pulled the two dogs into conference. Now that they could see the Orphan again, Silverberg was a little more animated: “It's actually in better shape than I thought..."

“Yeah?"

“Yes. Honestly, look at the impact zone..." Something had torn a gash twenty meters down the ship's belly. “That long and narrow; it was probably a glancing blow. Knocked out the ventral data bundle, yes, but... I'd imagine the cargo bay is still intact. And most of the systems..."

“What will we need to do?"

“Hull breach first," Kina suggested. “We can patch the cargo bay with some of the spare plates in Maintenance. Probably can't access it until the drive's up, though…"

“And the welds won't hold for re-entry."

“Double-plate it, outside and in." Bob ran his fingers through the hologram they were staring at, zooming their view in on the damaged area. “And put down thermal reinforcement on the outside... if we don't have enough, Rish will."

“Can we get helm control back?"

Kina and Silverberg looked at one another. The shepherd was the first to speak. “Yes... I believe so. We'll need to bypass the ventral bundle. If the damage is severe, I don't know that we can splice that much fiber optic. But... for simple commands, a repeater would do. I could jerry-rig one with a couple spare radios."

“Life support first."

“True, Ralla..."

The life support readings from the Orphan were spotty, yes, but Cory didn't entirely understand the problem. “What do you mean? We sealed the cargo bay, I thought."

“We tried — no guarantee it worked," Kina told him. “But if the life support isn't stabilized, it's also not reliable. We could see gravity shifts, temperature spikes — massive atmospheric variations, too. No offense, Mr. Messenger, but human bodies are also more fragile than ours. And we'd be looking at toxicity if the atmo's just a little bit off-spec..."

Without stipulating to his frailty, he allowed the two engineers to draw up their plan. First, patch the hull. Then, fix the life support. Then, they would bring the reactor back to full power and re-establish the ship's control systems.

“With luck, that'll be it."

“With luck, yes, Mr. Messenger," Kina smiled.

First, though, they had to get aboard. Even Cory was not in the mood to bother Rishika as the panther maneuvered her ship alongside the older freighter. It was an extremely delicate operation — Cory had served aboard starships in the Colonial Defense Authority, and he'd heard the bragging stories of naval aviators talking about how difficult it was to land their fighters on the deck of a carrier.

But a fighter and its carrier, at least, shared the same general vector. The Mnemosyne's Orphan was spinning and twisting wildly — almost, he gathered, at the limits of the little Svarog's thrusters.

The computer didn't seem to be any more confident. “Danger. Collision warning. Thirty meters."

Cory couldn't even understand what the panther was doing. She had drawn a course for the salvage ship's autopilot to fly but she seemed to be changing it constantly, matching and rematching their bearings and velocities. A visor hid her pale eyes from view.

“Danger. Collision warning. Twenty meters."

Both her paws now grasped the ship's manual controls. She worked them in smooth, careful movements — half a centimeter at a time, at most. “I hate your ship," she muttered. “I hate it already."

“Steady..."

“Quiet, Kina," she hissed. “It's not my fault your airlock is so small."

“Danger. Collision warning. Ten meters."

Cory hazarded a glance to the situational hologram. The Svarog had forced itself into an awkward and shrinking orbit around the tumbling Orphan. Its thrusters were firing constantly, in nearly every direction.

“Danger. Collision warning. Five meters."

“Ready maglocks."

Kina, sitting next to her, had appointed himself her assistant. He flipped a pair of switches. “Armed. Three meters. Watch your vertical..."

“I know."

“Danger. Danger. Danger."

“Point seven lateral. You overcorrected —"

Rishika snarled, and twisted her paws on the controls. A moment later the ship was rocked by a heavy thud, a solid crunch that shuddered down the little craft. “Lock it! Now!"

“Locked," Kina sputtered. They were no longer moving — but the Svarog's hull was reinforced for such maneuvers, and the Orphan was not. Her side was crumpled in a meter deep where she'd taken the force of the impact.

“What the fuck?" Cory couldn't tear himself away. “What the fuck kind of pilot are you?"

“Are we docked?"

“Fuck you, cat," he shot back. “You said you could —"

Rishika ripped her headset off; she was panting. “Are we docked? You're lucky we didn't overstress my damned grapples. Hell with your ship!" And she stormed off, slamming the hatchway to the bridge with a sound nearly as heavy as the collision had been.

“Can... can we try to log in to the computer?" Silverberg finally asked. He, too, was gawking with wide eyes. “Is that still online?"

“I think so..." Kina sighed, and tried to focus on the task he'd been given. “Really poor signal to noise ratio on this connection. We must be linked to one of the backup transceivers..."

“Or somebody broke the fucking antenna," Cory scowled. He gave the computer his password, and waited. “Well?"

The shepherd's teeth were gritted. “Yassuja; this downlink is awful. I've got readings, though. Looks like... wow. Well. Looks like the structural integrity's still good. Airlock doesn't look like it's been damaged..."

“Life support?"

“Really patchy, Mr. Messenger. We'll have to suit up."

The freighter looked different than he remembered it, and Messenger was slightly puzzled until he realized he was standing on the wall, rather than the floor. Their suits had boots that were designed to clamp to any surface, and with the artificial gravity failing the side of the corridor was as good as anything else.

Kina and Silverberg looked even stranger in their suits than he did — the helmets were oversized to accommodate their muzzles, and gave them a deeply alien appearance. Their tails, too, needed to be tucked into a protective case.

It was monstrous, really. “Where to, Mr. Silverberg?"

Rishika Iyer had stayed behind on the Svarog, to monitor their situation. It was just the three old crew of the freighter, carefully exploring deeper into the bowels of the darkened and battered ship.

An access corridor ran along the ventral side of the ship as part of her double hull. It contained the ventral data bundle — the dense spinal cord of fiber optics and power cables that linked the ship together — and they could all see that this had been completely destroyed. At least five full meters of it had been reduced to twisted, shattered uselessness.

“No patching," Silverberg sighed. “We'll need to bypass it completely..."

Below them they could see the outer hull, and through it space beyond. The stars were drifting far too quickly, and it made Cory sick to try to watch them for long. Instead, he turned back to the two dogs. “But this? We can fix this?"

The hole, twenty meters long and a meter wide at its longest, was framed by gnarled and jagged metal. Thinking about it, Cory Messenger was surprised they'd even survived. Silverberg, though, smiled from inside his suit. “I saw worse in the service."

They patched the outside first, to get it over with. The salvage suits had augmented muscles, and in the low gravity it was easier than Messenger would've thought to move the big patch plates around. Working together, the dogs cut down the twisted metal into something manageable.

He had to admit that they were good at their jobs. They smelled strangely, and they got fur everywhere, and he couldn't always understand their accents — but they were effective, efficient engineers. The whole of the work took a little more than two days, and when it was done Messenger still had his doubts about re-entry, but the ship looked mostly intact. “You're happy with it?" he asked Kina.

“It will do. And now..."

“Now?"

“Now," Kina pulled out his computer, and clipped it to the corridor. A projection spread out over the wall; deck by deck diagrams of the freighter, neatly color coded. Dozens of little points flashed, summoning attention. “We start the real work."

***

Robert Silverberg had been known as 'Bob' for nearly all his life. Nobody called him Yønshadan Raltayisa; even Kina stuck to 'Ralla' if he needed something more nakath. His corporate masters had called him 'Bob'; the lawyer who had helped him to buy his liberty deed called him 'Bob.'

But they'd called him that in the service, too. At Eden, and at Fort Massai, and at Red Rocks. He'd been a technician at the base on Red Rocks when they told him about the new company looking for volunteers. A moreau company — “2130s," in the parlance of the Colonial Defense Authority.

Back then, he'd been called 'sergeant,' too. He still remembered their commander, Captain Tindall — a good-natured human; not without his skepticism but not shackled to it, either. He'd stuck by them when CODA wanted to dissolve the company. He'd kept them going on Jericho, in those dark weeks when they were the only survivors of their battalion.

That was a fierce, desperate battle. Their machine, a big Rooijakkals mech, had taken a direct hit, and he'd come back to consciousness staring at a glaring warning panel and unable to move. He remembered the medic telling him that his back was broken. He remembered the surgery, and the physical therapy...

He loved Kina, but Kinnich had never really understood. Getting out of CODA had been the shepherd's idea, not his. “They're just taking advantage of you," he insisted. They'd been at a bar outside the base where Silverberg was deployed and Kina was working as a mechanic in the waste processing plant...

“Maybe." The collie stared down into the pale honeyed brown of heavily diluted scotch. Moreaus were too sensitive to alcohol to drink it straight, although they enjoyed the social ritual. “But where would I go?"

“Thought about maybe a freighter? There are always ones with openings, brother — even for nakathja like us."

The collie saw them often, rising into orbit from the docks at Ruby Points just to the south of Fort Tiberius. Space would be his own destination, soon enough — for now he was training new soldiers on the Rooijakkals' systems, but there'd be a combat rotation before too long. “Doing what?"

“Anything!" Kina was young; the shepherd's eyes always danced with raw, puppyish energy. He'd been lucky; his liberty deed had come cheap when the shipping firm that owned it went bankrupt, and he found quick work on the docks. “I can fix anything that moves, and you — well, you're a citizen, and..."

“I don't know that I want to leave the company," the collie admitted. Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 49th Armored. Many of the first 2130s had left — or been killed — but there were always more to replace them. Now Bravo Company was full of moreaus, too.

This was a mixed blessing. The company was highly decorated; Captain Tindall and now Captain Carignan in B Company were devoted to their charges. Still, CODA treated them as expendable: their mechs wound up spearheading any dangerous assignment the Defense Authority happened to have.

That was, indeed, why they were at Fort Tiberius — recuperating, replenishing their losses after the fighting in the Briar Canyons of Tarvessi. Twenty men, a fifth of the company, dead or injured. Foley, and Lester, and that pretty young husky Jo...

“But look what they've done to you, Ralla..." Kina reached across the table to take the collie's paws, holding them warmly. “You and the others..."

Kina saw the look in Silverberg's eyes; the haunted expression that came over the dog's face at times. He saw the way that his love could still hear Jo screaming, in quiet moments, and he saw the way Bob jerked upright in the middle of the night, panting into the darkness.

And because the collie knew that Kina saw that, he trusted him. Tindall had understood, and wished him well. Bob was not the only 2130 to leave after the fighting on Tarvessi. He saw others from the company, on the docks around Tiberius, for the months it took until they could land a spot on the Mnemosyne's Orphan.

And, somehow, seven and a half years had gone by. The nightmares had gotten better; the pain in his back had gotten worse. The Orphan was not the best place to work — the crew disliked them and the hours were long and the tasks were menial — but they thought of it as home because it was the only place they could call home.

Kinnich liked it more. The shepherd enjoyed the challenge and the sense, however vague, of responsibility. He liked seeing new places — even the rundown harbor towns with their grungy bars and obscene dance clubs. Kina, Bob thought, would always be a pup.

Mnemosyne's Orphan represented seven years of the collie's life, and when they'd had to abandon ship he was surprised how little he truly minded. Hana Lanja wasn't bad — it was good to see Bester again, and to smell fresh air and tread on soft grass. Kina chafed, that was all.

Yes. Always a pup. Even now, he was responding to a recalcitrant thrust constrictor by cursing at it, as though sheer energy could get the machine working again. It could not: “Bad news, Ralla."

“Dead?"

“When the cut-off valve fired, the shock must've misaligned something or... I don't know..."

Bob had been leaning against the wall, because standing for too long hurt. With a muffled grunt he pushed himself upright and shuffled over to look at the partially disassembled constrictor and the readouts of the diagnostic computer. “You tried running the cold-cycle procedure?"

“Twice... it always fails on the third step, waiting for confirmation from one of the internal sensors. Do you think the sensor might be bad?"

He shrugged. “Could be anything."

That meant taking it apart the rest of the way; Kina set to work, and four hours later when he pried a casing panel back they had their answer. The electromagnets, fed by one last pulse of electricity from abused capacitors, were fused together in a solid mass of splintered, melted metal. “But I thought the safeties were..."

Supposed to prevent exactly such an occurrence, yes. They explained it to Cory and Rishika — that years of skipped maintenance meant they'd taken any number of shortcuts. Who knew if the safeties were even still operational? Even still there?

Unlike the panther, Cory didn't seem particularly surprised at the explanation. Wright hadn't been the best captain: money for repairs came slowly. The ship had a solid hull, and good machinery, but even good machinery had its limits. “I guess that isn't something we can fix, is it?"

“No," Bob said, shaking his head. “The whole constrictor will have to be replaced. With the magnets broken... between taking it all the way apart, replacing them..."

“Recalibrating based on the new field dimensions, reprogramming the computer..." Kina added.

“Plus trying to find a replacement constrictor for a Maybach 400 these days. No, Mr. Messenger, it's... well. It's fucked."

Along with the auxiliary computer, the cargo hold life support regulators, the forward gravity stabilizer, and several dozen power relays. Two weeks of salvaging, and the life support in the habitable sections was just barely functioning. No engines, no helm control; no main computer or internal sensors.

Cory took the news quietly, but in his face the collie saw not the first mate of a merchant ship but a motionless figure trapped in the wreckage of a broken machine, and a medic, turning to his partner and saying: his back's broken. We're going to need to cut him out...

***

Cory put in an order for a replacement constrictor, to be delivered to them by drone courier from the nearest junkyard with a working unit. That meant another delay; worse, it meant spending even more money, and though he believed the Mnemosyne's Orphan was worth a great deal it would have to be operational first.

After the new parts arrived they set about installing them — Cory wasn't comfortable in a spacesuit, which ruled out work in some of the more damaged sections, but there was plenty to be done in the functioning parts of the freighter. The cargo hold would be inaccessible until the main power grid was working, along with everything forward of it, but the engine and machine spaces in the stern seemed to be in fairly good shape.

Since the beginning they had been using the auxiliary generator in the engine room for life support and to drive the repair equipment. The main power distribution system had shut down automatically sometime after the accident, as a protective measure. Bringing the Orphan all the way back to life would require starting it again and connecting it to the main reactor, which for now was on a low-output emergency mode.

The two dogs explained that they'd need to shut down the auxiliary generator for a few hours to test the integrity of the grid — the first step in linking the main reactor back to the rest of the freighter.

That would leave the stern without power, though, and since the auxiliary generator was the only thing keeping the lights and oxygen and gravity going they would need support from the docked Svarog. It was nothing surprising, and though she watched the procedure carefully Rishika raised no objections.

“Ready here," she finally said.

“Same," Kina called back, over the radio. “I'm going to plug in now. We're connected and synchronized. Ready to switch over."

“In three," the panther agreed. “Three. Two. One." Her dark paw nudged the control panel, and then she disappeared into the pitch blackness that immediately followed.

Cory could see nothing but the glow of stars from beyond the bridge windows, where they were not hidden by the bulk of the derelict freighter. His first thought was not panic but irritation. One more thing. “Power failure?"

“Not likely!" the panther spat. “Not the Svarog."

Salvage ships did, generally, have more capable reactors than their small size would've implied. “Fine. What then?"

“Your ship." Rishika was growling her fury; Cory would've sworn he could hear the fangs in her voice. “Your ship — I use that word loosely — is a fucking deathtrap, that's what. You must've blown one of my stabilizers. I can't believe I even agreed to take this job!"

“Alright, alright. You've made that clear." Over and over again, in fact; it was a recurring theme on Iyer's part. “Let's go through the recovery procedures." A pale circle of red light appeared on the console, from the flashlight he held in his right hand. “Emergency power couplings are —"

“Where'd you get that? The light?"

“Under the console. It's in the manual. Emergency power couplings are disengaged," he read from the dials on the board. “Safe to bring up the generator."

He saw her paw hang motionless, at the edge of the red light, before moving to start the emergency generator. “Starting. You read my manual?"

“I'm not going to be on a ship I don't understand. That's just asking for trouble. Stage one. You got the coolant pumps?"

“Yes."

“Stage two."

“It's hot. Self-sustaining." Some of the fire had left her voice — though only some. “Output on one and two?"

He flicked the flashlight up to look at the tapes. “Fifty and forty-eight. Close enough..." A moment later, with the sound of another bank of switches being activated, pale lighting returned to the bridge. “Looks good. Solid ten on all the busses — wait. No, bus six is completely zeroed."

Rishika's head jerked over. “It is? Ah, it's shorted." She switched the circuit off and the lights around them brightened slightly. “Damn..."

“— come in, over." Kina's voice crackled; they must've been connecting to a backup transciever.

“Rishi here," the panther answered. “Everything's fine. Over."

“It looks like you went dead. We're still getting power, but..."

Her fingers splayed, and Cory saw the claws briefly emerging. “Yes, you're fine. The problem is with one of the power regulators on the Svarog. When external power is being drawn, it sometimes... shuts down our internal systems."

“But you're alright?"

“Yes. We won't be able to do much until you're done, but we're safe. You can keep working. Svarog out."

Cory turned off the flashlight and replaced it carefully. “So remind me..."

“Shut up, flat-face," she muttered.

“Which one of our ships is the deathtrap, again?"

Rishika hissed, and pushed herself away from the console. “It's fine."

“You were all ready to blame me. Or the dogs, most likely — and it sure as hell wasn't their fault, was it?"

“Not this time. I..." Her heavy sigh was short, and defensive. In its vulnerability it served, almost, as an apology. “I don't need to provide external power very often. You know, most ships and stations still have working reactors."

“So you never got around to fixing it."

That was the crux of it, no matter the excuses — a malfunctioning system was still a malfunctioning system. And Rishika's responsibility: “No."

Rishika was proud of the Svarog, he could tell; captains always were. Sean Wright had been proud of the Mnemosyne's Orphan, too, and like the Orphan the salvage ship was showing her age. Most of the computers were not linked; some of them were twice as old as Cory himself. “Like that when you bought it?"

“Yes. From some human junk dealer who didn't know what she was worth." By now Cory was used to hearing human as an epithet from her. “I fixed everything else myself. And you know what, ape? I did a damn good job."

He didn't know what to make of her: quick to anger, and at least as ambivalent towards him as he was to her. But like the dogs, he couldn't argue with her skill, which had been clear since she'd first gotten them docked.

Actually, if he ignored her fur, and her tail, and her blazing eyes she reminded him a lot of any other captain — particularly the more independent ones, the salvagers and the asteroid miners and the bounty hunters who worked according to their own schedules and their own rules.

“My second ship out of school — the first time I had any responsibility — was when I was the boatswain on a foreign-built lighter. A YT-2400." Those were Sanganese ships, made by the Yamaha-TowadExIn Stardrive Corporation that had stamped them out by the hundreds over the years. “They kind of looked like these —"

“I know about 2400s," Rishika said, cutting him off. She was giving him a curious expression, sideways. “I was the navigator on a YT-2403 for two years."

“So you remember the cheap spiderweb chom-tanium they had between the double-hulls? To help dampen the inertial changes?" Outside of the Yucatan Confederacy, artificial gravity was largely still an expensive luxury, for Yucatec scientists had invented it, and held the patents. “We had an aftermarket A-G generator — bolt-on kit somebody scavenged from another ship. They never got it programmed right. So when we switched, the field generator would hit that spiderweb and just go crazy with all the resonance artifacts. There'd be about a second of lag before the compensators kicked in."

Rishika was still eyeing him skeptically. “So you'd switch from local gravity to internal gravity, and for a second..."

“Drop straight down," he confirmed. “Hit the ground every time. Just a meter or so, not enough to damage the hull but a hell of a thump. I begged the captain to fix it for seven launches, and you know what he said? He said 'Cory, I ain't had a problem with this in a hundred damn runs. One of these days, son, we'll get around to it.' It's how captains do."

“What happened on the eighth?"

In spite of her inhuman gaze; in spite of her tail, and her sharp fangs, he grinned. “Intersystem hop from Yali to New Fourra. We had a hold packed full of Yalikungan eggs."

Rishika blinked; her eyes widened. “Oh, no..."

Cory had to chuckle with the memory. Yalikungan golden hens were supposed to have the best eggs for twenty parsecs around — valuable enough that they were a major export of the Yucatec colony on the planet. “Still remember opening the cargo hold when we landed and this... gross, sticky, rotting flood... you know," he mused, with another soft laugh. “You know the irony of it? We only installed the A-G 'cause you have to have one for an organic cargo license. If we'd stuck to machine parts or computers..."

“What did you do?"

“Me? I quit." He looked towards the viewscreen, where the hull of the Orphan loomed. “My point was that I understand. It's not easy being a captain. You could do worse than a dodgy regulator you never really put to the test..."

The panther turned away and, with her back to him, stayed quiet for a time; her inky fingers traced around the worn dials and switches of the Svarog's control panel. “I suppose you could do worse than an old double-sawbuck like that crate you've got."

“You could, but we'll have to see."

“Another week, I think. Two, at most. That should get you main power, and if the jumpdrive is in good shape you'll be ready to go."

Even if he trusted her assessment, and even if nothing else went wrong, there wasn't a point in speculating. “It doesn't matter."

“Why not?"

“I can't pay you for another week. Let alone two, let alone fuel or any of the incidentals. We'll have to call it here. I can pay you off, and then... oh, I don't know."

Resting her paw on the Svarog's navigation console, Rishika turned to give the man a surprised look over her shoulder. “What?"

“The spare parts — I... I'd budgeted for some of them, but that fucking constrictor, I mean... I'm in the red as it is. My cut of the insurance money, my savings — maybe the dogs have something, but I... I couldn't ask them for that."

“Why not?"

“Because..." The reasoning felt as true as it felt strange to hear himself thinking it: “Because they've been fucked over by guys like me enough. They weren't even really crew, I guess — you know? I mean — they were, because they worked for us, but they didn't get anything from the insurance. That was Sean's doing, I'm sure, the cheap bastard..."

“I'm surprised you care."

“I am, too. I wouldn't have called them friends or anything, but..."

“Equals?"

He sighed. Equality had never been the issue. He hadn't liked having to replace the air filters, sure, or the sound of the odd language they shared. He saw no reason that they should've needed to exist in the first place — but they did, and he couldn't change that. “Sure. I was, ah..." Now it was his turn to sigh, and his turn for the sigh to have a heavy trace of guilt. “I was wrong about them."

“Something must've changed..."

“They're not as different as I thought. Maybe. I mean, at this point we're in it together. Us three dumb fools — only ones who cared enough to come out here..."

Rishi took a seat in the captain's chair and unlocked it so that she could spin around to face him. “What will you do, if you have to give up the salvage?"

“Try to find a backer. Or run odd jobs for a bit, I guess. Kina and Bob have a place on their colony, at least. And I'll find something. We'll come back — eventually. It's not right to give up on her, but... I can't pay them and I can't pay you, so again... it doesn't matter. I can think about the future in the future. Can you stabilize the rotation, at least, with what's left in the budget?"

“With what's left in the budget?" she echoed, and laughed coldly. “The initial budget? No. This wasn't exactly cheap, human. Lot of fuel."

“So much wasted effort, though... unless..." Another sigh. “Look. What if I offered you a share of the cargo? I don't know what it was, but it must've been valuable. Not guns — they don't need those on Carver's Landing. They're an exporter. Computers, I think. We hadn't declared anything, but I know we had cargo. Last time they did that, it was platinum ore. And — and the insurance, that would've been on Sean, if he didn't declare it, and whatever it was it must've paid out big because he said he wasn't working again."

“Black market computer parts? Contraband?"

“No offense, but you're a salvager — you'd know what to do with it, anyway. I'll pay you twenty percent over what we agreed on."

The panther crossed one leg over the other and leaned back in the chair. “Fifty percent. You're asking me to gamble now, flat-face."

He was. He was asking all of them too, really — himself no less. “Fine. Fifty."

Rishika's feline smile shifted into something that looked, to him, an awful lot like a smirk. “I bet I wasn't your first choice of salvager, was I?"

“No."

Instead of spitting, or calling him human with that sharp-edged hiss, she simply laughed. “When I found out who you were, you weren't my first choice of salvage jobs, either. Perhaps you apes aren't all so bad. You'll still never be one of us, but..."

“But you were wrong about me?" he asked, and was surprised to find that he hoped the answer would be 'yes.'

The dogs, Rishi explained, came from the American Genetics Marketing Corporation. GeneMark designed their moreaus to serve as living computers and data processors; occasionally, as mechanics or skilled laborers. All they made were dogs, and they'd all been designed to be absolutely subservient. “Obsequious, quiet, loyal to a fault — they start with the propaganda from day one, poor things."

“And you?"

“Trimurti wanted us to be independent. The first models were ones they wired up into sweeper ships so they could hunt orbital debris. You know, a processing station run by GeneMark moreaus will have a few humans and about three dozen dogs following their every word. Not us. I can run a starbase by myself. Trimurti figured that if they were going to engineer us, they'd make us the absolute best. I'm stronger than a human. Faster reflexes. Better senses. Much, much smarter."

She was right, to a point, Cory thought. AGMC's marketing materials said over and over again that their moreaus had a higher IQ than the smartest human being... but neither of the dogs would've claimed such a thing with anything like the sense of pride Rishika now displayed. It led to an obvious question. “How do they keep you as..."

“Slaves?" The panther tilted her head, and nudged her long, raven-black ponytail out of the way to tap at something just behind her left ear. “It's an electronic link. The same thing they use to interface us to a Trimurti-compatible computer system. The right subroutines act as a trigger on the pleasure center of my brain. The wrong ones kill me."

“You're all addicts, you mean." Such implants existed for human beings, too, but they were highly illegal: the stimulation was so impossible to resist that men gave up on everything else. Selling wires outside of a hospice was a capital crime.

Rishika shuddered, and her smile vanished. “That ship that I said I was the navigator on? We went down on Kaltrig... which is mostly icy. My highly evolved, highly engineered body kept me alive when the others died. It didn't keep the computer online. For five weeks, until the rescue, I tried everything I could to get the link working again. Afterwards... afterwards, Trimurti cut my contract, because I wasn't good for anything. You know what they offered me? What you humans offered me? Freedom or death. Most of us take the second."

Cory could not even begin to imagine it. “I'm sorry."

“Dogs are pack animals. When they get their freedom, they just find a new pack. You can't find a replacement for what I had. They say that Trimurti moreaus are all damaged, and that none of us are truly emancipated. We never will be."

“Do you feel that way?"

She didn't answer him immediately. Instead, she leaned under the console to pull out the flashlight again. Rather than turning it on, she spun it around in her paw in expert, quick movements, flicking it so that it rotated about her black fingers. “The strangest realization I had was when you pulled this out, and when you said that you familiarize yourself with the ships you're on. I do that, too. I hate thinking I have anything in common with humans. I need to think of you as helpless and dumb — like animals. If I think of you as intelligent, then I have to think that you did the things that you did to me on purpose."

He swallowed; nothing seemed appropriate to say. “But we did."

“I know," Rishika said softly. “I've given up on looking for pleasure. It never measures up. Hatred? I can do hatred, as you see..." She was smiling again, though more sadly. “It isn't healthy. The dogs do without it. But if I don't have my hatred, then what do I have?"

“You'd be within your rights to hate me." He didn't like having to admit that, but how could he argue? It had never been his orders triggering the panther's brain, no, but it had been his way of thinking. His culture. His prejudices. “So if you want..."

“I did, at first. But I don't now." She flicked the flashlight on, and two pairs of eyes followed its faint red beam as it wandered along the floor. “Maybe it starts with just one light in the darkness, and then..."

Maybe. Cory found that he sincerely hoped it was true.

The admission of a newfound lack of mutual suspicion cheered Rishi up, though; a minute later she put the flashlight away and they turned back to the business of watching the repairs. When the dogs had finished work and disconnected the electrical connection everything on the Svarog came back to life at once.

Rishika and Cory both went to meet them at the airlock. The human was well aware that his rapprochement with the panther would not amount for much if the repairs had not been successful: she might've agreed to stay on for a cut of the profits, but his parts suppliers would not and he had no more money for spares.

“Please tell me you have good news."

Kina, the shepherd, grinned. “Sure. It passed all the tests. No integrity failures — no warnings, even. And..." He held up something for Cory's inspection, although the man had no idea what it was. A piece of dark metal, or burnt plastic, the size and shape of a badly chipped marble. “It's a rock. Probably used to be part of an asteroid, a few billion years ago. Bob found another, smaller piece, too."

“Basically, we got very unlucky," the collie said.

“Which is why we're lucky now." Kina's tail wagged.

Rishika stood at Cory's side, taking her turn examining the debris. “So you are. You're ready to start powering up? I was thinking about it, after my regulator here cut out... We'll need to make sure the relay on the ventral node is ready to take the strain before you activate the grid. It's had so long to cool off that I wouldn't want the thermal stress to take it out when it gets hit with live power. We'd be looking at another week's work there."

“'We,' did you say?" Bob cocked his head at a quizzical canine angle.

“You need help. Right? So let's get started."

***

With four sets of hands, they made swift progress. Over the next six days, they patched the rest of the ship up and worked on everything that would be needed to reengage the fusion reactor. They'd sent a signal to restart it, which seemed to have been ignored.

“Somebody," Cory said, “is going to have to suit up and go fix it. Now, I was thinking that —"

Bob Silverberg spoke up before he could help himself. “I will."

“You? Ralla — janhata." Kina squeezed the collie's paw tightly. “You don't have to. I can. I swear..."

“No. It should be me. I had experience with reactors when I was working on the mechs. I'm better qualified than you are."

Kina switched into Nakath-rukhat, dogspeak, to conceal his meaning from Cory and the panther. “But why? You... you don't even want to be here, love..."

The collie smiled, gave the other dog a hug, and pulled his helmet closed.

Truthfully he did not know that Kina would've understood even if he'd been able to explain. The shepherd was correct, after all; Bob had not wished to return to the Mnemosyne's Orphan, and the travails of the salvage itself had done nothing whatsoever to motivate him. Learning that they were not to receive anything from the freighter's insurance had been one more blow among many; one more reason not to trust humans when they promised anything.

For a week, though, Cory seemed different. He'd volunteered more, he and Rishika both — and something had clearly changed between the pair.

Very few nakathja were completely independent — indeed the very desire was so rare as to be considered an illness. Where humans spoke of 'lone wolves,' the nakathja referred to 'small-pack' dogs — those who were most comfortable with one or two others. Kina was a small-pack nakath. So was Bester, who kept to himself even in the close-knit Hana Lanja community. For Kina, the world was as simple as his collie lover.

Bob was not a small-pack dog. He needed to be part of a larger family — to depend on them as they depended on him. Though he loved Ralhota Kina with all his heart, he craved the sense of belonging to a larger pack. Bidding farewell to Captain Tindall had been one of the hardest moments in his life, harder than any of the agonizing physical therapy after his injury, harder than the struggles of life in the corporate barracks where he'd been raised. Harder only had been the loss of the Orphan — not for the ship but for the abject betrayal when the pack abandoned its two canine members.

No, Kina would not have understood.

He stepped through the last lit hatch and into the jumpdrive section, activating the magnetic soles on the excursion suit and testing to make certain they had a firm grip on the deck. Three strides later and the artificial gravity was completely gone; the lightless corridor before him yielded no clues in the blackness. He felt a panicked moment of confusion; disorientation while his body struggled to make sense of it all. And then a rush, a startling jolt of clarity.

Kina would not have understood.

He would not have understood that a Denel Rooijakkals 55i combat walker dropped from an armored landing ship with the same shocking transition; the same tug of weightlessness. That its driver could show no hesitation, no loss of attention, for the other two crewmembers were counting on him to be ready for anything. Ready for the tumbling chaos of a combat drop, and the wailing of alarms. Ready for the booming thunder of artillery fire, and the dancing urgency of evasive maneuvers against incoming missiles. Ready in a second to respond to a gunner shouting contact, right one!

Bob tapped his helmet to turn the lights on and made his way deeper into the silent, dark freighter. He knew the way to the engine room by heart. Seven years of walking the worn passageways had turned it into routine — he would not have needed the lights, even, except that it was better to be safe than sorry. Like it had been in the Briar Canyons, pinned down in an arroyo with a dozen hostile hover-tanks out for blood and the other two mechs in his section waiting for the dog's guidance...

Afterwards, in the safety of a temporary camp, he'd found one of his friends touching up the artwork on the side of a scuffed Jackal — a painting that had first been applied long before. The Jackal was named Skoll; the painting depicted a feral wolf, with claws outstretched, leaping to capture a fleeing sun. Which sun, Bob did not know; the mech had seen many. “Good as new?" Bob had asked.

The other man was a white shepherd; his dark, soulful eyes were always at odds with the soft cream of his coat. “Good enough to meet Tyr, when it happens. We came close, today." Sergeant Chanatja, as usual, seemed too matter-of-fact for the statement to come off as fatalism. It was more of a moreau's typical, placid view of death; corporate propaganda had long ago inured them. “They're wearing us down. I'm not surprised."

Alpha Company had lost two more Jackals in the day's combat; beyond the machines, they'd suffered one fatality and three serious injuries. “Reinforcements are due tomorrow."

Chanatja finished cleaning up the wolf's snarling fangs, and set the paintbrush down. “I'm sure they are, brother. But until then, I want to be ready."

He'd painted markers on the side of his Jackal, too, one for each kill. There were plenty of them; Bob didn't know if the markers were Chanatja's idea or if it had come from his gunner, a short and hot-tempered muskrat from one of the outer colonies. Either way, the shepherd had provided the explanation: when his mech was finally destroyed — when, and not if — he intended the victor to know that the score had not been even. “The 26th Orbital is scheduled to drop. We'll link up to the north."

“The 26th Orbital is a human unit," the white shepherd replied, with the trace of a grim smile. “And this is unfriendly territory. I expect a hard fight."

“You think they use us as cannon fodder," Bob said. It was a discussion the two had from time to time, based on the engagements that the company was volunteered for. They did seem to have more than their share of outmatched fights. At Jericho, and at Varna while Bob was recovering from his injuries, and once more now. This time, though, he was thinking of a young mechanic he'd met at Fort Tiberius, home base of the 49th Armored. And he was thinking that he had more than enough money to buy out the remainder of his contract, and Confederate citizenship besides. “Why don't we leave?"

Chanatja picked out a different paintbrush and dabbed a fresh spot of red over the sun. “Leave? CODA, you mean?"

“Yes. Retire. Rather than be... at the whim of these people. Humans. They'll never really accept us..."

“Ralla, Ralla, Ralla..." The white shepherd shook his head. He never seemed to raise his voice; he kept his history to himself, for the most part, but chanatja in dogspeak meant 'memories' and Bob had little reason to think they were pleasant ones. “I know humans. I know them better than you, even. I've been free on the outside. This isn't a perfect life, and I do think they have little concern for our well-being. But I tell you, Ralla..."

“Chanla?"

“If I feared death I would leave. But I don't."

Nakathja seldom did. “What are you worried about?"

His thin smile broadened. “I'm worried that I will retire, janhata. And then I will learn that this, here..." He turned his muzzle in an arc over the camp; his paw came to rest on the smooth armor of the big mech. His white thumb rubbed the painting gently, and came away red. “This was the best we ever had it. With you. With Skoll. With the others. I am terrified that I'll learn that despite everything, this is the life that I was looking for."

The 26th Orbital had missed their drop. It was a hard fight to the eventual rendezvous. Two months later, in a bar outside Fort Tiberius, he had forced himself to decide that Chanatja, the dark-eyed cynic, was wrong even when he had not been wrong about the Briar Campaign.

And, somehow, seven and a half years had gone by.

“Kina, Bob," he said curtly into his radio. “I'm in the engine room. We've got a problem."

“What is it, Ralla?"

“The feedback stabilizer must've failed." Exploded, was more likely: bits of ceramic and metal hung motionless in the air, along with power cables thick as his arm.

“That explains some of these readings. And why it's not talking to the main distribution network."

“What about the backup?" The stabilizer's job was to absorb any fluctuations in the output of the fusion reactor. The freighter had two, but they were connected in sequence: the reasoning was that any subcritical failure of the primary stabilizer would be caught by the auxiliary, and that any complete stabilizer failure would require a return to drydock anyway. The ship's designers had not counted on anyone trying to restart the reactor with one of its safeties obliterated.

“I'm trying." Bob could picture the shepherd perfectly. Kina's big ears would be swept back in thought; his long muzzle would be wrinkled. “The secondary's diagnostics are active, but it's like it's not connected."

“It's not. The power cables are loose from the reactor to the first stabilizer. There's nothing left of that, so no input to the second stabilizer. Here, are you getting the feed from my suit?"

“Yeah. Oh, Ralla, this is not good. We've got other problems, then..."

The fusion reactor had received the signal to wake up from its low-output emergency mode; once received, there was no way to rescind the order. It needed to be taken out of standby so that power could be directed to its cooling and maintenance systems, at least, to say nothing of the rest of the ship.

Kina knew the implications of that, but implications were a far cry from being able to solve the challenge. “I'm not sure how to fix this."

Fixing things was in his nature, as a mechanic. Bob's knowledge was more practical. He thought of a time his mech had taken a direct missile hit, severing its power core from all of its systems. He remembered the temperature warnings; the threat of impending immolation. The frantic brainstorming with his crew. “Can you shut down the interconnect to the main grid?"

“No. Why?"

“So it's live?"

“Yes. Why?"

The collie clenched his jaw. “I'll connect it directly to the backup stabilizer."

“No you won't!"

“At low output... maybe the current won't be that high. The cable will reach, anyway..."

“Ralla! No you won't — we'll think of something."

Bob looked around the engine room, and tried to plot his movements. One jump would take him to the far wall, close enough that he could grab hold of the unwieldy cable. It was insulated, fortunately — so was his suit, although he thought that this was unlikely to matter. If he wound up touching exposed wiring, the suit would do nothing to save him.

“Don't do this, Ralla. I can see you looking around. Come on," Kina urged him. “There has to be another way."

But that was unlikely. Before Kina could dissuade him — before he could dissuade himself — he leapt. Just like dropping from orbit, he relaxed his limbs to take impact, but his landing was seven years out of practice, and he felt every bit of force jarring right into his back. His boots held him in place, fortunately; now he was standing on the wall, with a twenty kilovolt power conductor floating right in front of him.

First, he cleared as much of the floating debris as he could: he did not entirely know what would happen if he brought the power line into contact with anything, but nor did he desire to find out. Then, standing on the undamaged secondary stabilizer, he worked the remains of the old connector free and set them on a gentle path towards the floor.

Now there was an obvious place to connect a power line, and a power line free to be connected. If he shoved them together, the contact would electrically weld itself — he hoped. At least, it had worked that way on the Jackal. There was only one way to find out.

The cable was heavier than he'd expected, and unwieldy. Grasping it by the insulation, he tugged it with a great deal of effort — feeling every bit of exertion in a body whose state of repair was not much better than the Orphan. By the last few feet he had to put everything into it: his muscles strained, and it took everything he had in him to focus on the precision that was needed to slot it into place.

One final surge, and then a bright, blinding flash that the suit's visor darkened to shield him from. The pounding boom of a small explosion knocked him from the stabilizer and sent him flying, bouncing off the wall to the floor below. A distant voice, quieter by far, echoed in his helmet.

“Ralla? Bob? Yønshadan Raltayisa, yassuja, answer me!"

He grabbed for a handhold to stop his spinning and twisted to orient himself until he could feel the grapples on his feet settling down. A deep breath. The pain in his back was gone — it would come back, of course, but for the moment he felt nothing but elation for the green light flashing steadily on the backup stabilizer. “It's done. We're ready to reinitialize."

“Oh for — you can't do that to me! Ralla, my goodness — I thought that..."

“Later, Kinnich. The start sequence..."

“Um. Of — of course. I'm bringing the reactor out of standby now."

Rishika's voice came in next. “The stabilizer is cold. You're going to have to work with no safeties until it warms up. That means a big kick is going to hit the whole grid."

“We need the jumpdrive to act as a big capacitor to smooth that out," Kina explained. “You'll have about fifteen seconds to turn it on." Otherwise the reactor would lock — at best, nothing would be damaged and they'd have to start from scratch. At worst...

“Ready," he said; the same way a younger collie would've said copy that actual, standing by.

“Jumpstart injectors look like they're at full power, Ralla. Unlocking the core... now. Mr. Messenger, the safeties? Safeties off, Ralla. Expect full power in five seconds."

He braced himself for it; counted down like he was waiting to be dropped from a landing ship. As systems came back online the interior lights blazed to full strength; gravity thumped him solidly, and he heard the complaints of a dozen computers all at once. Registering it all without responding, he brought his paws at once to the jumpdrive controls. Power feed active. Jump sequencers ready. Unlock the rotator and...

Just as planned. A reassuring hum reverberated through the Orphan as the jumpdrive spun to life. His simple repair job held nicely — plenty of time for the reactor output to drop and the drive to settle down. “It's Kina, Bob. We're... we're back. It's done."

“This is Cory, hey. Confirmed. Clean downlink, clean return — fucking hell, all systems are operational." Bob could hear the man's relieved, amazed sigh clearly in his helmet. “Good work."

***

It was; there had been a lot of good work. He was walking through the corridors of a fully operational starship that her very owners had completely written off. That everyone had written off, save for him and two dogs who would've had every right to laugh in his face. And they were — or Bob was, except it was a giddy laugh of accomplishment, and he was hugging Cory tightly.

“We'll have to get the nav computer reset. Maybe Rishi can help," Cory said, finally pushing the collie away. “She was a navigator before."

“I know we're not completely out of the woods." Bob grinned anyway: “But it's much closer. Where are we going?"

“Roettger Station, first. We need to get the hull patched for re-entry."

Kina trotted up to join the pair as they headed towards the cargo bay. “You don't trust our work?"

“I don't want to come this far just to turn into a meteor. How's the hold?"

The shepherd slipped in front of them, examining the computer screen next to the interior hatch. “Looks good. Atmospheric pressure is steady, gravity's fine..."

Although the Mnemosyne's Orphan had a substantial hold she rarely traveled completely full and her final voyage was no exception. There were two big containers, firmly secured to the deck plating; Cory was relieved to see that nothing had damaged them during the impact or the chaos that followed. Both looked to be completely pristine.

Sean Wright's fingerprint had been used to secure the containers, but as first mate Cory's passwords worked just as well. “Moment of truth," he said to the dogs, and waited for the thunk of a solenoid triggering to release the lock. He had no idea what to expect, really, when the doors swung open. Probably not guns or drugs, but who knew what Sean might've agreed to in some particularly drunken fit of his?

Stacks upon stacks of boxes greeted them. The boxes were made of stiffened paper; he drew one out carefully. It had a surprising heft, and opening the lid revealed protective metal foil. That was promising — computer chips, for example, took such protection. Or other sensitive machinery. Whatever was inside the foil seemed to be hard and smooth.

He turned to the dogs. “Should I open it?"

“It's ours right? Captain?" Bob grinned again, and Cory realized that he'd never really appreciated the grin before — or, perhaps, he had never seen it. “We have the salvage rights."

“True..."

The foil opened easily. Underneath was a flat, smooth, white material. As he peeled the foil back further more colors appeared — geometric shapes, almost like a circuit diagram. Lines and whorls joined to curious patterns, embossed on the surface. Kina, facing him, was in a better position to understand it. “'Happy birthday, Melinda.' Um... 'the biggest hit of... them all.'"

“What." The word came out too flat to really be a question; it was more of a shocked oath. Cory turned the thing around: sure enough, that was what the lettering said. On closer investigation the geometric shapes around the words looked less like circuitry and more like stylized musical notes. “Who the fuck is Melinda?"

“Melinda Cohen," Bob said.

“You know her?"

The collie held out a worn, old piece of paper, with the electronics just barely still functional and the letters rippling under his touch. “I read the bill of lading. It was going to Marv Cohen."

Cory's jaw hung open as pieces of information knitted into a narrative that was ever more clear, and ever more distressing. “The music producer. I remember hearing about it now. It was a big party — big performers, lots of booze... booked one of the islands on Carver's Landing for it..."

“Oh, yeah." Kina had apparently followed the news, too. “All the local ecclesia was there, and the big corporate bosses."

“Oh, fucking hell..." Cory looked to the open container with a blank, forlorn expression. From its taunting, neat stacks of cargo he glanced back to the paper that Bob held. “A container. Of cakes. We salvaged eight hundred and sixty-four cakes."

“Six gross," Bob explained.

“I know that eight hundred and sixty-four is as much as six gross," Cory shot back. Simple math was not beyond him, human though he was. “You know what that is? It's fucking terrible."

“That's probably a more accurate conversion," Kina muttered. “Why keep it a secret then? Surprise party?"

“Or to avoid the import du..." Cory trailed off before finishing duties, because he realized that what had happened was even more pointless. “No," he said, with his voice icy. “Our license to carry organics wasn't going to be renewed for another week, and Sean probably wanted to take the job now and figured what the fuck, who's going to care? And here we are. You know why he didn't tell me? Not because it was secret, but because I would've bitched at him for being a fuck-up. He always said I had a stick up my ass; too big on following protocol. He wouldn't have wanted to deal with me. That's it. This is all one dumb fucking... I don't even know..."

“Comedy of errors?" Bob Silverberg offered. “Mr. Messenger, you have to admit that, right? It'll be a good story, when we're back in port."

Back in port. “Oh, Christ. Rishi..."

The panther had not accompanied them, choosing to stay behind on the Svarog. She was not on the bridge, however, nor any of the commons spaces. Eventually he tracked her down to her quarters: he was slightly worried about disturbing her sleep, but she answered the door promptly.

“Hey, Cory. You got the bay open?" She stepped back from the door to let him in. On a salvage ship even the captain's berth was tiny. He felt a little trapped, even considering what he had to tell her. “Why didn't you radio me? I was waiting."

“I wanted to tell you in person. It's worthless."

“What do you mean?"

“The cargo. It was birthday cakes. Six gross of birthday cakes we were couriering on a special assignment. Apparently."

“Six... gross..."

“About eight hundred and sixty."

Her tail jerked. “I know how much it is. Who needs that many cakes?"

“Rich people. I don't know. I... I'm sorry. I thought..."

“What am I supposed to do with birthday cakes?" The tail was lashing faster and faster; her curled lip showed vicious teeth as she began to pace in the confined quarters. Cory took the opportunity to step towards the door, just in case. “Huh? You're just going to fuck me over, human?"

“You think I'm happy? What do I have to be happy about?"

“You have a ship."

“Yes, but..."

She whirled about, and before he could finish the thought she was upon him — Cory's back was to the wall, and he could go no further. Her pale eyes narrowed to slits: “You have a ship. Your ship. You have what you wanted — don't you?"

“Yes."

“Then why are you complaining?"

Scant inches from her sharp fangs, the human felt increasingly that protest would be futile, if not painful. “I just... I suppose it's strange, but I didn't want to..." Once again the act of putting words to his thoughts helped him realize what he truly felt. “To disappoint you. After your hard work, after everything..."

The panther's ears twitched, and flicked backwards. She blinked. “Me? What? I'm just your salvager."

“Perhaps, but you're good at it. And the agreement was for the cargo. Look, I came to tell you in person because I also wanted to say that I'll find a way to make it up to you. You deserve that."

Some of the tension ebbed from her face; her shoulders loosened, and she dropped the snarl in favor of something more curious. “You humans... 'deserve,'" Rishika repeated the word as if she might've misheard. “Damn it. You mean that, don't you?"

“Of course."

The panther shook her head in disbelief. “And I believe you. For what it's worth."

“I wouldn't try to take advantage of you. I've..." He tried to shrug, though she still had him pinned and it proved to be somewhat difficult. “I've come to appreciate you. And the dogs, sure, but... yeah. I like you."

Rishika froze and then, with a sigh, settled down by a few more inches until she was no longer threatening him. “Cakes," she said, and laughed bitterly. “Human. Oh, human. I suppose I like you, too. What am I supposed to do about that?"

“We'll figure out something. It'll be alright."

“Sure." But she seemed to be talking about something else, something more than the salvage, for presently she sighed more wistfully. “I don't understand you, sometimes. Sometimes I think... I think if I..."

The sentence hung. “If you?"

“I think I could..." Her ears came forward again, and then her muzzle was pressed to him, up against his lips. Cory felt the heat of her breath, and the curious bristles of the feline's whiskers, teasing him in what amounted to a tentative, hesitant kiss. “I could do that," she continued, not truly pulling away. “And you wouldn't fight me."

For two or three seconds he tried to summon up some revulsion. He'd met his share of less than fetching men and women, in bars and dance clubs around the ports — but humans, all of them. The figure before him was plainly not: if anything she was more of an animal. But the reflexive desire to push her away didn't come. He wondered what the fur of her arms might feel like. “No..."

When Rishika kissed him again, the human decided to find out. He slid one of his arms around her back, letting his fingers wander. Her soft, black pelt had the feeling of fine velvet and the warmth of a summer afternoon. She closed her eyes while he stroked her, and tilted her head so that their lips clung yet more snugly. Even still, her whiskers tickled.

Sharp, almost painful points of pressure on his side reminded him that she was no human: sharp claws dug all the way through his shirt to the bare skin underneath. Cory winced, and saw her eyes flutter open again. “Sorry," he muttered to her. “Just wasn't expecting it."

“Fragile," the panther teased him quietly. He took advantage of her parted lips to work his tongue between them, and caught the rough texture of her own meeting him. Rishika sucked her breath in with a gasp. As he explored the heat of her alien muzzle he felt the soft pad of her nose bumping awkwardly against him — heard the start of a vibrating purr, and caught a curious pressure on his leg that he suddenly realized was her tail.

Cory's hands felt over the feline's body: so much of it felt normal enough, save for the luxuriant fur. Supple curves, and firm muscles as his fingers caressed her... her spine arched, and those fingers kneaded in against the base of her swaying tail. Rishi's purring built in volume; her strong paws gripped him tightly.

When he groped for her taut rear the panther's purring caught and rose into a rumbling snarl that crashed against him in a rush of heated breath. This time it was her tongue lancing forward, pushing its coarse way past his lips to remind him of who had started out in charge and fully intended to remain there.

He was starting to find advantages to her less than human attributes. The way her tail jerked when he squeezed her; the way her purring rose and fell with the tenor of their fiery kiss. The subtle flicking of her ears and whiskers — body language that served as response to every touch and shared contact. Finally she pulled away, and her green eyes held a predatory glint that he couldn't help but find captivating.

Cory might've spoke, but as he opened his mouth she seized him and the world spun; her bunk caught them with a protesting groan. The human himself was not of a mind to protest; tangled in her arms, he took the opportunity to seek her out once more for another kiss.

Now her deceptively deft paws pressed eagerly between their two bodies to pull hastily on his tunic. As soon as it was off he felt the soft warmth of fur on naked skin — and prickling reminder of those razor-sharp claws that threatened to score the man's bare shoulders. She growled in excitement at the touch; her tail circled his leg provocatively.

Rishika was wearing a buttoned shirt that gave in easily to his fingers. Underneath he found more fur, softer, warmer, and the heavy swell of her breasts trapped by the barrier of smooth fabric. With his help she wriggled from the shirt, and when he unfastened her bra and worked his fingers in a kneading track over supple flesh her growl rose to another urgent snarl.

An abrupt pressure on his crotch had Cory growling himself — a choking groan of surprise as the panther went for his pants next, showing little concern for their structural integrity. When they were gone, she made equally short work of his briefs. Her fingers ran hungrily over his stiff member and he found the brief presence of mind to gasp in something close to English: “Hey — careful. Claws..."

The panther snickered, and her squeeze sent a jolt of pleasure that blotted out his ability to speak further. “Don't worry, human. I won't use my claws... not my tongue, either..." She dragged it, rough and hot, across his chin. “You'll be fine..."

Her other paw had been busy removing her shorts; he heard the heavy fabric land with a thump next to her bunk, and when she leaned back and he moved forward to follow her he fell into the snug valley of her bare thighs. Soft fur blanketed him; wrapped around him when he worked his way closer. Her fingers disappeared; his hips rolled against hers and his cock slid through the novel, exciting softness of her plush fur.

Rishika tensed and drew her breath in for another deafening purr when the blunt head of his shaft nudged firmly into something warmer, slicker than her fur. Cory thrust again, practically by reflex, and groaned as a sudden steamy heat enveloped him, clinging around the first few inches of his length. More slowly, he pushed the rest of the way inside her, grunting softly as the sensations overwhelmed him.

She was warmer than any human, a tight, textured heat that rippled and grasped at the novel smoothness of his prick. When he'd hilted in her she looked up at him wonderingly. “No barbs?" she asked. It was a strange question to ask, but he shook his head. Pulling back gently, he thrust a second time and the panther moaned happily. “No knot, either..."

“I don't — think — no?"

“No barbs or a knot," Rishika sighed happily, and arched her hips to meet his next few slow, fluid movements. “It's so nice..." Her muscles were being put to good use — there was more and more effort behind each countering push of her body that brought them smoothly together. “Ah — fuck me, Cory..."

He was trying to hold himself back. Almost all of it was overwhelming, from the fur that greeted his hips when he bucked into her to the sheer heat of the panther's body, wet and pulsing around his cock as he slowly pumped it into her. The conversation was at least distracting. “I guess it's different from —"

“Cory, stop talking," she hissed. “Fuck me."

With a desperate groan he gave in, driving his length sharply into the dark-furred feline whose ragged, guttural purr suggested he'd finally gotten the right idea. He abandoned any restraint, yielding to his aching need as he pistoned and rocked between her sleek thighs with a growing urgency.

He would never have seen himself like that. Never have imagined that he would be wrapped in the arms of an animal, her tail twitching and lashing about as he rutted swiftly into her. Never have pictured the look of spreading bliss on her face as his cock plunged wetly into her, over and over, their bodies meeting in a clashing rhythm.

Never have pictured the half-frenzied, feral expression he himself wore. He couldn't help it. Something about it was driving him wild — the sound of her purring or the faint but distinctly alien scent of her body. The way her claws pricked him. He knew she was going to leave marks, just as he knew he wouldn't mind them. The panther thrashed and snarled thickly; her grip tightened further.

His whole body flexed with the effort of his rough, primal thrusts. With dense-furred thighs grasping him and her tight folds massaging and clenching at his cock he was losing the ability to fight off the inevitable. A little more, he told himself. A little more and —

A deafening yowl announced its futility. The pinpricks of Rishika's claws flared into something sharper, and a curious wetness. He couldn't focus on it though — the panther's spine curled, rocking her hips up to bear the weight of his own at the deepest point of his next thrust. Her sodden cunny spasmed wetly and Cory felt the inexorability of his own climax rising before he could do a damned thing to stop it.

Like a runaway nuclear reaction, the heat built and fed on itself until it exploded in a giddy rush of pleasure that had the human roaring. His toes dug in to the sheets as he shoved himself into the feline, as deep as he could manage, grinding their hips together. His muscles locked, his cock twitching swiftly as he spilled his seed into the snarling panther.

They collapsed into a mess of tangled limbs and drenched flesh, with the human panting raggedly on the soft blanket of her ebony pelt. Rishika was still trembling, and Cory's half-buried length still jerked weakly, but the energy was spent. He felt her paws as a soothing warmth on his back.

Now and then the warmth shifted into something less pleasant, when she brushed against particular spots. “Rish?"

“I... might have... clawed you."

“Drew blood?"

She showed him one of her paws; the pad glistened with dark liquid. “I got a bit carried away."

“And I'm... fragile," he reminded her. But it didn't hurt that badly. It was nothing like the tender warmth of resting against the feline, with a pelt so soft he found himself wanting for a fur coat of his own. She wasn't completely black: in the right light, he could see the hint of patchy spots. Humans, though he liked his own species, were not so fascinating to look at. He pushed his fingers slowly through the fur, watching the trails they left settle down with her breathing.

“Well," Rishika said, through a contented sigh. “Fair is fair, human. You made enough of a mess of me..." His softening length had slipped free, and when her lithe frame shifted he could feel a bit of wetness trickle from her and over him. “At least you're not a dog."

“I wasn't expecting anything. If I'd known, I might've planned better."

“It wasn't a plan." She bit her lip, worrying it lightly against a fang. “It was impulsive. And I thought you'd push me away. Or I thought I'd push you away. But I didn't, and you didn't..."

And if anyone had asked him, a week earlier... “It felt like a good idea, at the time. Actually, it still does."

She looked at him strangely, and he gave her a soft kiss to buy time for reflection. Sure enough, she returned it. “I haven't done this in years. It stopped meaning anything. You know, I wouldn't mind doing it again..."

“Now?" Between his nicked back and his overtaxed muscles Cory had some doubts about his own ability, but that was very different from his volition. And the more he thought about it, maybe even his ability could be marshaled...

“Yes. But also, I mean that I wouldn't mind being around you more... regularly."

“I wouldn't either."

“You have a ship..."

He kissed her again. “Yes."

“You owe me. And I have some scrap I need hauled..."

“We could do that," he said. It felt like a good idea.

“You're still just a human," the panther added, in case he might've forgotten. “Don't get any ideas."

“None at all?"

Rishika grinned, and pulled him so close he felt every quiver of her purring, even through the fur. Her tail encircled him. “Well..."

“Well?"

“Perhaps one or two couldn't hurt..."

***

Captain Cory Messenger served as the navigator, too, and the boatswain, and the cargomaster. He was no engineered super-being, just a man; it was more than its share of work to plot their course. When it was done, though, he felt a distinct note of pride. “Chief, we're ready for FTL up here. How's the reactor?"

“Reactor is at full output, captain. All systems are go." Though he couldn't see the collie, he thought the chief engineer sounded just as pleased as the ship's master. “Engine room, standing by."

“We've got a schedule to keep, then. Spin up the jumpdrive."

They kept the channel open, and he heard the pair go to work; shouted orders and responses in that curious language they shared between them while, one by one, the indicators on the status board went from red to green. He didn't understand it — no more than a word or two, at most. But they did, and that was the only thing that mattered.

Twenty thousand tons of metal and man, knitted together by that shared code. She was bound for Roettger Station with a cargo of eight hundred and sixty-three cakes, minus one sacrificed in celebration. One hour out and ten days to go: on the bridge, the captain watched every screen like a hawk.

And, lights aglow in challenge to the deep black all 'round her, the Mnemosyne's Orphan hummed onward.