A Matter of Honor (Privateer Tales Book 9) Read Free Page A

be careful with this."
    "What time are we meeting tomorrow?" Tabby asked. "I'd like to get a run in."
    "Shuttle is picking us up at 0800 local," Nick answered.
    Where Marny was Earth-born, tall and heavily muscled, Nick was small, even by spacer standards. What Nick gave up in size, he more than made up for with raw intellect and his capacity to plan. Tabby, Nick, and I grew up together on a mining colony in Sol's main asteroid belt and had been best friends for as long as I could remember.
    "We have a load to pick up on Curie's main orbital platform sometime tomorrow. It'll fill Sterra's Gift completely. After that, I've got an appointment to take a look at a segmented container tractor. It's pretty roached out, but the scans show it has good bones," I said.
    "How would you get it back?" Nick asked.
    "It has operable engines. We'd sail straight to Meerkat shipyard on Gros. Worse case, we piggy back on Sterra's Gift . Without seeing it, I can't be sure," I said. "One nice thing is the guy selling it has two sixteen container link segments. No engines on them, but we have those engines you picked up a few weeks ago."
    "What shape are they in?" he asked.
    "They'll need work, but they've been used as recently as two months ago. The guy is either retired or is trying to retire and is cashing out," I replied.
    "I hope he's realistic about price," Nick said.
    "He's asking seventy thousand for the entire setup and we've an appointment day after tomorrow to check it out," I said.
    "Do we have that much free?" Ada asked.
    "Barely," Nick answered. "All of our capital is tied up in ore that needs to be delivered to the Belirand Terminal Seven project."
    "How much are we sitting on?" Ada asked.
    Nick flicked a spreadsheet to her from his HUD. "If you skip to the bottom, you'll see the total. Once we deliver that ore we should be sitting on one-point-one million. Subtract fuel costs, that looks more like an even million," he explained.
    "And," I added. "We'll clear forty thousand for this trip in delivery fees after fuel," I said.
    "That's insane," Ada said, breathing out. "I knew the ore had value, but I didn't realize we were sitting on that much."
    "That makes two of us," Tabby agreed.
    "Big Pete really wants us to get an armor-glass kiln if we can find one. 'The bigger, the better' were his exact words," Marny added.
    "Frak. I forgot about that," I said. "But I don't see that we can afford it on this trip."
    "He might be okay with a small one if it's between that and nothing," Nick said.
    "This would be the place to find it," Tabby said.
    She was right. Ninety-five percent of Tipperary's total population was spread out between Curie, Irène and Ève. If we were going to find something as specialized as an armor-glass kiln, our best shot would be the orbital bazaar that was tethered to the temperate, forest planet of Irène.
    We finished dinner and walked along the boardwalk. The night sky of Curie was littered with bright stars and we could just see the edge of the Petri Nebula that was also visible from Lèger Nuage.
    "Cards?" Tabby asked as we arrived at the deck separating the three huts. A metal fire-pit was inset into the center of the wooden deck and surrounded by comfortable couches.
    Nick started the fire that had been thoughtfully arranged and we settled down for a few hours of cards. It was well after 2400 when we finally turned in.
    I didn't even hear Tabby when she left early the next morning for her run. She'd given up trying to get me to come along as I couldn't run fast enough to make it interesting for her. Unfortunately, Marny didn't mind waking me up. We were compatible running mates and she felt it was her duty to keep me in shape. I wondered if there was some collusion between the two women, but they never would admit to it.
     
    ***
     
    "I'm starving, are you sure they're going to provide food?" Ada asked as we met on the deck.
    "That's what was passed along," Nick said, referring to the instructions Lieutenant