Not that she couldn’t understand why Central would feel the need to build up their weaponry in the Third Sector. Numerous multiyear crop failures had led to an increase in intersystem squabbles and civil wars, and the Syndicate tribes, finding larger markets for contraband, were becoming bolder and more aggressive. But when Galileo had appeared a few weeks ago, contacting supply chains and shipping companies as if she had been in the Third Sector for years, Guanyin had found their polite diplomatic greeting entirely inadequate.
It had taken Guanyin very little research to remind herself where she had heard the ship’s name before. Galileo had been credited last year with preventing an all-out war in the Fifth Sector. No less than Valeria Solomonoff herself, the Fifth Sector’s most venerable PSI captain, had signed a treaty with Central through Galileo. Galileo’s captain, a man called Greg Foster, was widely considered to be an accomplished diplomat.
Guanyin disliked diplomats. She always found they were too good at lying for her taste. So when Greg Foster had contacted her, ostensibly to introduce his ship, she had been cold, unfriendly, and more than a little blunt.
“You waste your time with me, Captain Foster,” she had told him. “It is the Syndicates attacking your ships, not us.”
The last six months had seen a marked increase in Syndicate raider activity, and for the first time in decades they had included Central Corps starships in their targets. PSI, who had dealt with raiders for centuries, was the obvious place for Central to turn when formulating their own strategies for dealing with guerrilla attacks. A request for help Guanyin might have understood, the sort of short-term alliance PSI and the Corps had formed repeatedly over the centuries. She did not understand this amorphous buildup of Central’s power, and it bothered her.
What is Central planning?
The baby rolled and kicked, and Samedi woke up, his wolfish face next to hers. She reached up a hand and rubbed him reassuringly between the ears. “Do you suppose they are trying to trick us, little one?” she asked. “Or do they fear something specific, and don’t want to tell us what it is?”
Samedi gazed at her with his contented, worshipful eyes, and sneezed in her face.
Cali heard her roll out of bed, and came in from the sitting room to lean against the bathroom doorframe as Guanyin washed her face. “He’s too young to be in bed with you,” Cali said.
“When he’s old enough he’ll be too big.”
“You slept with Shuja when he weighed more than you did.”
“Shuja never weighed that much.” Actually, Cali was right: Shuja had topped out at sixty kilos before he had started dropping weight due to illness and old age. Guanyin only broke fifty-five when she was pregnant. But she had been pregnant for half of Shuja’s adult life, and she had grown used to having a dog curled up next to her expanding stomach. “Samedi will learn.”
Cali crossed her arms and glowered.
“Your face will freeze that way, you know.”
Not that it would matter if it did, of course. Cali was beautiful, and she knew it, breaking hearts without thinking much about it. Guanyin, who never doubted her own place in Cali’s heart, yelled at her sometimes, but it made no difference, and she supposed Cali would have to grow out of it on her own. But Guanyin knew one of the reasons she had reacted to Captain Foster the way she had was because he reminded her of Cali, right down to the polite condescension.
Guanyin turned away from the sink. “Can I ask you something?”
Cali pushed herself off the doorframe as Guanyin walked past and asked Orunmila for some music. Guanyin settled back onto the bed next to the patient puppy, wide-awake now and wagging his entire body, trying and failing to resist licking her face. “No, love,” she said sternly, and he backed off onto his haunches, waiting for her to change her mind.
Cali pulled up a chair and sat next to the bed. “Is this about the Corps captain?”
“He talked to me like you do, sometimes. Like I’m helpless, or too young to understand. He seemed to think I would find him persuasive and comforting, just because he has a nice smile, never mind the volume of weapons his ship is carrying into our territory.”
At that, Cali grinned. “Did you swear at him?”
It was Guanyin’s turn to glower. “Why do you do it? When you know I understand all this better than you do. Why do you treat me like a child?”
Cali shrugged and looked away. “Because I love you, I suppose, and I don’t like that things are hard for you. I want to do it for you, even when I can’t.”
That was a surprisingly introspective observation for Cali. “Captain Foster doesn’t love me.”
“Maybe you remind him of someone else.”
“Maybe he thinks, because I’m new, I’m a fool.” She shook her head. “I don’t understand. He dealt with Valeria Solomonoff in the Fifth Sector. You really think she let him get away with shit like this?”
“Maybe she doesn’t like him, either.”
“I spoke to her. She trusts him. She said, and I quote, ‘He is fighting what we are fighting.’ You know what she didn’t say?”
“I wasn’t there, Guanyin.”
“She didn’t say ‘He is a good soldier.’ So why is he talking to me as if there is nothing going on?”
Cali leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “You know, Guanyin, you could ask him. I mean, instead of trying to analyze what Solomonoff really meant, or poking at my character flaws.”
She sighed, gently tugging Samedi’s soft ears. “I was rude to him.”
“They’re rude to us all the time, and they’ve still told one of their captains to kiss your ass.” Cali shrugged. “They want something. Find out what it is. Maybe we can get something in return.”
Admittedly, that was not terrible advice. “What could they possibly want from us?”
At her words, Samedi launched himself at her again, and she had to close her eyes against his silky-soft tongue. “Hopefully puppies,” Cali said dryly, and Guanyin laughed.
The comm on her wall chimed, and Aida spoke without waiting for acknowledgment. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Captain Shiang,” he said, “but we’re receiving a distress call.”
She could hear it in his voice: tension and fear. She sat up, her hand resting on Samedi’s head. “Acknowledge and reroute,” she told him, knowing he would have started the process already. “Who is it?”
“It’s a Central starship, ma’am,” he said. “Captain—it’s Exeter.”
She met Cali’s eyes. They had not seen Exeter in more than six months—since before Chanyu’s retirement—but they had run countless missions with her for a decade. She had thought to wonder, just that morning, why Central had not had Exeter arrange for her to meet Galileo’s captain, instead of expecting her to accept the goodwill of a stranger. She wondered if Captain Çelik was still at Exeter’s helm.
She wondered if he was all right.
“What are they up against?” She swung her feet to the floor and stood, all her fatigue washed away by adrenaline.
“Syndicate ships, Captain. They’re reporting twenty-seven.”
Twenty-seven raiders. Against a Central starship. “How close are we?”
“Two