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snapped them at her.
    A babble of messages from other ships to Wayfare System Control and each other flowed in after I stopped transmitting. The authorities at Wayfare were obviously overwhelmed again. Why one of the most often used relay stars couldn’t upgrade its system control was beyond me.
    Lady was skating along the fringes of Wayfare, just heading for the jump point to Carnavon. A slightly unusual route, but I knew from experience that Wayfare System Control would be too busy to worry about what one little freighter was up to.
    And I was right. “ Lady Be Good , authorization granted to clear Wayfare.” I punched in the jump commands, secure in the knowledge nobody was paying attention to Lady .
    Nearby, Spacer Siri shivered. I dug a packet out of one of my pockets and tossed it to her. “These’ll help.” She caught the packet automatically and stared at it. “Somebody I knew beat star dust. They said that stuff helped a lot.”
    Siri nodded, tearing open the packet with trembling hands. I went back to studying my control panel. Somewhere aft, one of the engines groaned into momentary instability that made my stomach flutter. A moment later, Chief Engineer Vox called the bridge. “Bad.”
    “Can you hold it together?”
    “Yeah.”
    “How long?”
    “Depends.”
    “Give me as much warning as you can.”
    “Just did.”
    #
    Carnavon was small and dim. For a star, that is. No other ship beacons flared on our scans. Quiet and isolated, just the place for a small ship looking to avoid awkward questions.
    To get the right arrival angle on Fagin we’d have to fall through the Carnavon system and climb out the other side, a time-consuming pain in the neck under any circumstances.
    “Hey, Kilcannon.”
    “What, Dingo?”
    “On the bridge, sweetheart.”
    I made my way up there, wondering what Dingo could have to talk about that needed me on the bridge in person. Most of the possibilities weren’t very good. But Dingo didn’t seem worried as he pointed at scan. “What d’ya think that is, Kilcannon?”
    I peered at it, checked readings, then thought about it. “What do you think it is?”
    “I asked first.” Dingo smiled with derision. “Don’t know, d’ya? How long ya been a sailor, Kilcannon?”
    “Long enough.” I frowned at the scan. “It looks like a dead ship.”
    “Not bad! It’s a ship, alright.” Dingo’s smile vanished. “She ain’t dead. Not yet.” He tapped a blunt nail on some of the readouts. “It’s real faint, but there’s still a heat source active in there, and leaking atmosphere.”
    “Saints. Are you saying there’s someone still alive on that thing?”
    “Could be.”
    A wreck would’ve been interesting as a possible source of parts, though probably not interesting enough to warrant a diversion from our course. Wrecks tended to be stripped before we ever saw them. But if some of the crew had holed up in the interior… “There’s no distress beacon.”
    “Nah. Which tells you and me how that wreck got in trouble, right?” I immediately checked scan again, but Dingo was already grinning at me. “I checked. As good as I could with this tub’s instruments. There ain’t no other ships burning engines in this system right now. Either the pirates or privateers are sitting quiet in ambush, or they’ve left.”
    I scowled at the display. “Getting to that wreck will take us way off our track.”
    “Yeah.”
    “If somebody was waiting to ambush any rescuers, they’d have left the distress beacon working to lure people in, wouldn’t they?”
    “Yeah.”
    “But anybody still onboard it is most likely already dead.”
    “Yeah.”
    “But if anyone finds out we disregarded a ship in distress they’ll take the Lady and our licenses.”
    “Yeah. But if any survivors die they won’t be telling on us, will they?”
    “Damn you, Dingo. Get us over to that thing.” I turned away. “I’ll brief the Captain.”
    “Yeah. You do that.”
    #
    It was a big one.