Pay Me, Bug!

Chapter 09

WHEREIN the Terms "Rock" and "Hard Place" are Given Due Consideration

All of the crew had been affected by the audit, and when Hari, Vod, Gurgan and Morgan came back, Captain Vindh filled them in as quickly as he could, starting with the all-important disclaimer "first of all, it's not my fault..."

They took the news stoically, except for Morgan who flinched at the mention of Velis' name.

"She's here?" Morgan kept his voice even, but he pulled at his beard nervously.

"Sorry old man," Vindh said. "She's not only here, but she's stopping by for a visit tomorrow night."

"Wonderful," Morgan said tonelessly. Ktk thought if he tugged at his beard any harder he would be in danger of actually pulling out tufts of hair.

They all agreed that the best course of action that night was to get as drunk as possible.

Cyrus decided to stay on board to commiserate, and to be on hand the next day "to help handle the trouble she's going to bring with her." They all gathered in the Wardroom and drowned their sorrows with a considerable amount of Stellis (in both the green and blue varieties), as well as some other more exotic and substantially more toxic concoctions that Hari and Gurgan brewed in a spare cabin near the engine room.

Ktk opted not to drink that night. The giddy silliness that inebriation inflicted on it seemed inappropriate to the situation, and it wanted to think... and, perhaps, get a little more information on Captain Vindh's sister. It scuttled over to Cyrus, whose infamous tolerance for alcohol made him only slightly drunk. Cyrus looked up from his glass, grinned half-heartedly, and toasted.

"Missed you, bug," he said, slurring his words slightly.

Ktk replied that it had missed Cyrus as well, and was sorry he wouldn't be able to buy his ship.

Cyrus waved his drink dismissively. "Grif says not to worry just yet. I figure I'll wait a day or two before I start mourning... If Grif does what Velis wants--whatever the hell that might be--I'm pretty sure we'll get our money back. I don't trust her, but she's absolutely reliable when it comes to blackmail and extortion."

Ktk looked at the others in the Wardroom. Gurgan was telling a story that had Grif, Amys and Hari in stitches. Cutter and Vod were sitting apart from the others, and it looked like they might head off somewhere more private soon. Ktk leaned in closer to Cyrus and asked him to explain the situation between Captain Vindh and his sister.

Cyrus frowned. "Right. You weren't with us back when all that started."

Ktk replied that it had never actually heard of Captain Vindh's sister directly. It knew Doma, of course, and as a result hadn't thought highly of Vindh's extended family, and had decided Vindh felt the same way.

Cyrus chuckled. "That's about right. But it wasn't always that way. He and his sister were close once."

Ktk observed that this was obviously no longer the case.

"No it isn't," Cyrus agreed. "I don't know exactly what it was that soured them. I never actually met her until after the falling out..."

Cyrus emptied the rest of his glass and tilted his head back, thinking. "Grif had just bought the Fool's Errand," he said. "He'd had her for not more than a year. I was the engineer then, and other than Amys it was a completely different crew. I don't think you ever met any of the others. Anyway, one day Grif tells us we're headed off to Allied space, to Kinnar. That's where he's from. His sister was getting married, and he was looking forward to seeing her. So we set down on Kinnar, and he and Amys go off together. They were quite the pair back then..."