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"We," said Captain Hilfy Chanur, in a deadpan tone Hallan was coming to recognize, "have been invited to a wedding. Well, 'an elegant celebration of the bond of profound devotion between gtst excellency Tlisi-tlas-tin and gtst most excellent and decorous mates'. Figure that for a wedding."
The crew looked up. Everyone was sitting around the bridge, Tiar because she was on duty and Chihin and Hallan because their captain had gone off with two of their number into the impenetrable heart of Meetpoint Station with the kifish dignitary Vikktakkht an Nikkatu, and while their chances of getting her back again were considerably improved on those same chances a few days prior, after the run they'd just had no one wanted to be too far from the board that was monitoring station traffic. Just in case.
'Just in case' being, so far as Hallan could tell, the guiding philosophy of the Legacy and her captain, and one that had brought them safe through worse than this.
But here she was, safely back inside their airlock at last and looking, if not happy, then at least sardonically amused. Hallan wondered if he should stand. The crew wasn't usually so formal and he and the captain were technically married now, terrifying as that thought was, but it would be good manners and it wasn't like he was actually doing anything. Chihin was just showing him the topside ops board for something to do while they waited. But she saw him tense and gave an exasperated little shake of her head, so he flattened his ears and sat back down.
They came into the bridge, the captain and her escort, and it occurred to Hallan that he was in Tarras' seat and he really should get up, but she waved him back down and took Fala's seat by the coms board instead, and Fala sat down on the console, which was something Hallan would never have dared to do and judging by the dirty look she got from Chihin was probably something she shouldn't be doing either. But the captain didn't rebuke her.
Instead she gave them a wicked smile, mahe-style, showing her teeth. "Ourselves and the hakkikt. I think they were hoping he would tastefully decline the invitation. They hadn't reckoned on his gods-rotted sense of humor."
Hallan didn't even want to think about how many ways that could go wrong. The stsho were a fragile species. He'd nearly startled their passengers into insanity just by his presence on the ship. And the hakkikt- it was probably dangerous and unwise to speculate about an alien psychology, especially the psychology of the alien prince commanding the fleet of hunter ships that were currently hovering just outside the station's orbit, but Hallan got the impression he was the sort of person who liked to poke holes in anthills just to see the activity.
"Do we have to do this? Begging your pardon, captain," Tiar asked, speaking for everyone. Ears were at half-mast all around the room, and Tarras and Chihin exchanged a suffering look. They had all had just about enough of stsho.
"No. I'm going. I told them it wouldn't be fitting for Hallan to mingle with foreigners, seeing as how he's so recently married, and that you were all needed to look after him. Don't worry, you'll have your liberty. And these." The captain took from her belt a small black box, flicked open the lid to reveal a glitter of gold.
The senior crew just nodded in acknowledgement, accepting it as their due. Back and forth to Kefk with a shipful of stsho, fast turnarounds, running back and forth across the docks under sniper fire, bomb scares, Chihin getting shot, meetings with kif, coming into Meetpoint with live guns, not to mention saving the life of a stsho ambassador and more or less preserving the Compact- yes, they'd earned them this trip. But Fala with only two rings shining in her ear was still too young to affect indifference to the honor. Her face lit up and she leapt up from the console to take the box.
"I thought Hallan might run into less trouble in bars if he looked more like a spacer and less like a lost kid," the captain said, and it was a good thing Tarras had waved him back to his seat because his breath went out of him in a great rush and he felt so lightheaded that he might have fallen, if he'd still been standing. She couldn't be saying what he thought she was saying. He wasn't real crew, he wasn't signed with them, he'd spent half the run locked in the laundry, for the gods' sake.
But Fala had emptied the box into her hand and she was passing the rings around, one to Tiar and one to Tarras and one to Chihin and then she was standing in front of Hallan and beaming bright enough to illuminate the system, like the star Meetpoint didn't have. And not in the worrying way, either; this was pure sisterly pride in him, sincere pleasure in his accomplishment. Numbly he put out a hand and she dropped a ring into his palm.
"Congratulations!" she said.
The gold felt strangely light, for something that had featured so heavily in his dreams.
"Want me to put it in?" she offered, in a way that was not quite sisterly, and he felt Chihin stiffen beside him. He barely had time to think here we go again before Tiar was beside him with a solid hand on his shoulder.
"I'll put it in," she said, grabbing the tip of his ear in a firm grip and biting a hole clean through. There was a sharp, white stab of pain, but it was worse the way she was pinching the tip; he twitched his ear free before he could stop himself.
"Sorry."
"Just hold still, kid."
And then it was in, and now he could feel the weight of it, a real spacer's ring that he'd earned for a real voyage.
"You'll have to give us a liberty now," Chihin said dryly. "With Hallan's first ring to celebrate."
The captain pursed her lips, amused despite herself. "No debauchery on an empty stomach, considering past experience. Besides, I've had nothing but stsho tea and and a handful of chips all day. Let's have a proper meal together first and then you can go off and terrorize the station."