Outrageous Fortune-Errant Freight Book One

Chapter 13

There was a longer, more thoughtful pause, in which Eitan and Jagati shared a look, then they both turned back to him.

"I hope you're not expecting me to take the job," she said, literally waving the concept aside. "I hated the idea before and, hearing what you've had to deal with, the levies, the admins, the well-dressed women?" she shuddered. "Thanks but no thanks."

John looked at Eitan.

"As much as I enjoy a well-dressed woman, my skills are more confrontational," the other man said.

"Perhaps Rory?" John suggested. All three gave that a thought.

"No."

"Nope."

John himself considered. "Perhaps not."

"So we're agreed," Jagati said, slumping back in the chair. "You're stuck with being the captain."

"Ah, well, if you say so."

"I do," she said, giving a vigorous nod.

"Though perhaps," Eitan ventured, "once we receive the payment for this venture, we should take a more formal approach to managing our capital. Create accounts for the business and the crew—even make a few investments." When he noticed the others staring, he shrugged. "I read economics for two terms."

Jagati eyed him. "Of course you did."

"Did you happen to read engineering whilst you were at it?"

All four turned to where Rory stood in the galley's port doorway, the much-disputed box under one arm.

"Rory." John rose from the table. "Did you crack the combination?"

"I did," the response was short, but still nowhere near as irritable as when John had last spoken to him, half an hour since.

"And?" Jagati asked, also rising. "What is it? Art? Jewelry? A shoe? One of those fart-sounding things?"

"I think that was a kazoo," John murmured.

"Whatever." She waved him off, though at the time she had been unreasonably obsessed with the item. It had been one of their first retrievals, undertaken on behalf of a Dolian risto with a fondness for Earth instruments. "C'mon," she prompted Rory, "what is it?"

"That's what I'm trying to say. I've no idea what it is. Here, see for yourselves." He strode to the table and John hastily shoved the teapot and mugs aside to make room for the case, which, as advertised, didn't have a mark on it.

"Pretty," Jagati observed with a glance at John.

Rory, however, didn't appear interested in compliments on his handiwork. Instead he focused on the case itself, now sitting on the cleared space between John and Jagati. He angled the box so Eitan, on the opposite side of the round table, could see as well, then grasped the case's two front corners and lifted the lid open in a manner that came off as more dare than flourish.

"So." He stood back, shoved his fists in his trouser pockets, and glared at everyone. "That's it."

The other three looked inside the box. And kept looking.

"Okay, so—not a kazoo," Jagati said. "Unless they come in box shape?"

"Box-shaped with keys on," John said, angling his head to get a better look. On the whole, the object wasn't large, around twenty centimeters long and fourteen wide, and set in a nest of cotton. Given the size of the case, he figured it to be no more than three centimeters deep. "Numbered keys," he added, nodding at the columns of black and silver keys set into the black allusteel casing. They only ran from 0 to 9, but others, these black and copper and bearing various mathematical signs, filled the two rows across the top and the rightmost column.