Local Star, Aimee Ogden [ebook reader that looks like a book txt] 📗

snapped down to the wallport inputs, then back up to Triz. “Can you promise me it’s not someone in the Fleet pinning this on Casne for some reason?”

“No, but . . . ” Triz hadn’t considered that possibility, and she didn’t like considering it now. But the Fleet was made up of people, and people could do ugly things. Turn an uncaring eye to the gutterkids scurrying beneath the decks of Rydoine Hab, for example. Or slice through their own flesh to turn themselves into Ceebees. “I’ll help however I can, Nan, but—”

“I know you will.” Nantha half-smiled and Triz’s doubt sublimated into ever-expanding resolve. “Go see her first. She’ll need a friendly face. Even more than I did.”

“Her parents were going to see her . . . ” Triz hesitated. Some of her parents were, at least.

Nantha read into that silence. “She’ll need all the strength they can lend her and all of yours too. Give her my love, Triz. Please.”

“I will.”

“And take care of yourself. You know we love you.” Nan managed an echo of a smile. Her hand finally fell away from the wallport screen as its light flickered out. Around her, the low hum of the machinery was a distant comfort. The ships, ringed around the airlock at the ‘works center, stood on their pedestals like statues of old friends. Triz put one hand on the ventral hatch of a DX-3 Nebula and leaned into it, taking strength from its vast weight. When her arm dropped back to her side, she was ready to lose herself in the monotony of work again.

When Quelian arrived in the wrenchworks, late in the morning, Triz was up to her shoulders in a Swarmer’s innards. She knew her way around a ship, at least, and she couldn’t make the damage any worse—which was a lot more than she could say about trying to solve Casne’s case. What did a stupid guttergirl know about the inner workings of Justice, or the Fleet? “Glad to see you’re keeping yourself together,” Quelian said, pressing his lips together.

Triz realized, with a flinch, that he was . . . proud of her? “Sure,” she said, not trusting her voice to go uncracked on more than one syllable.

“I’ve got some screenwork to catch up on before I join you out here.” There was a closed-down look to him today. There was always a closed-down look to Quelian, really, but now it was as if he’d added a rotary combination and a maglock into the mix. “I’ll be in the offices for now.”

Triz flashed him a sounds-good gesture and focused back on the ship in front of her. When the office door banged shut behind her, she let out a planetquake of a breath. While the repair job she was currently working on did require her to rip open this panel and get intimate with the ship’s computer systems, it did not require her to try to download those systems’ logs to her personal datablocks.

This was the third Swarmer she’d tried—surely one of them had captured vid that would prove Casne innocent—but every single one had been doubly locked down beneath Fleet access codes and Justice inquest screeners. Triz considered asking Lanniq or Saabe to log in under their own officer-level access codes (a wrenchworks account only got you so far, and she wasn’t exactly running diagnostics here). But you had to rank somewhere just shy of the Seventh God of Issam to merit access to this data. Triz wasn’t on speaking terms with any of the admiralty and/or Godhead.

What was she even doing here? She knew functionally nothing at all about Justice or Fleet actions or, really, anything beyond getting the engine of XR-2 to stop knocking under maximum thrust. Stupid to think she could do something useful. In the end, she was really just a hopped-up guttergirl with a little good socialization.

She could hear Casne’s weary retort to that. If you call yourself stupid again, Triz . . .

Fine. Not stupid, then. But very, very frustrated. Triz fobbed into the magistrate’s scheduling system to check on the appointment she’d requested with Casne. It had been bumped an hour later in the afternoon, but still lit up green—request accepted.

Another hour to kill.

Triz headed to the next workbay over and crawled underneath the imbalanced rear engine suite of a Gyrax 33. She finished repairs on the Gyrax, and one of the Skimmers that was only a cracked plastiglass panel the worse for the wear. Quelian would take them out for a spin later to make sure they were spaceworthy before handing them back to their usual pilots.

Triz hadn’t been out in the black since the trip over from Rydoine and didn’t plan on another such jaunt anytime soon.

Or any time.

The work absorbed her, filled her mind with joint seals and line reroutes. Triz felt like a different person when she worked, and sometimes she thought she liked this person better than the one she saw in the mirror every morning and night.

A few minutes before her scheduled slot uphab, Triz went to wash up in the wrenchworks sink. But as she splashed water on her stained hands, her wrist fob chirped. Her appointment had been bumped back another two hours. She gnawed her lip and went to find something leftover to eat in the ‘works coldcase. She indulged in a pair of dumplings from a tin marked with the name QUELIAN in bold hand on the lid—it had been there four days now, and if he wasn’t going to eat Casne’s daddy’s cooking, then he couldn’t complain if Triz cut his losses—then she started the necessary disassembly of Kalo’s fighter. When she hit a good stopping place, she stashed her tools. Quelian still hadn’t emerged from the office. That could be either good or bad. He didn’t like screenwork for screenwork’s sake, but if he had moved on from invoices and supply ordering to using the resources of Justice to help Casne out . .