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Kell nodded to Piggy, who slapped the wall control. The doors ground their way open. The two nearly identical maintenance skimmers faced each other a mere four meters apart.

The lead guard pointed to Kell’s skimmer. “As I told you.”

The driver of the other skimmer leaned out of his cockpit. “Hey! Who are you?”

“I’m Botkins.” Kell glanced again at the name stenciled on the gloves lying in the cockpit. “I’m standing in for Laramont.”

“Laramont’s in the cafeteria, waiting to start his shift!”

“Dammit! They told me he was sick. So he’s going to be servicing the shuttles?”

“No, I am!”

“Wrong. I just did.”

“Listen, scab, I’m not going to let you cost me my piece work for the night.” The mechanic clambered out of his cockpit. He was nearly as tall as Kell and had as much muscle, though a fair amount of it was swathed in fat. Tools swung on his belt as he straightened up.

Kell waited until the man reached the window of his cockpit. “Hey,” he said, “let’s do this like gentlemen. You know, I might not have done such a good job of gauging the hydraulics.”

The mechanic scowled at him. “So?”

“So, you scrub my work as not up to spec. You get credit for the whole job but only have to redo the work you don’t like. But you don’t formally log the complaint, so my record stays clean. That way, you get your pay and I still log the time, so I can keep working toward getting a permanent post here. What do you say?”

The mechanic considered it. “No. I’m just going to scrub your work as not up to spec … and report it that way. Right now.”

Kell glanced at Tyria. A call like that to Central would probably alert the spaceport operators to the unauthorized maintenance job they’d just done. He returned his attention to the mechanic and said, in an overly reasonable tone, “Well, now. That’s my job vaporized. My career at Revos Spaceport. If you’re going to take that from me, I think I ought to have something from you.”

The mechanic twisted his lip in an approximation of a contemptuous smile. “Such as what?”

“Such as about fifteen square centimeters of your skin, a liter of your blood, and whatever you have left of a reputation.” Kell threw open his cockpit door, catching the mechanic off guard and hurling him to the duracrete.

Kell stepped out over him, took a couple of steps to the side, and stretched. He caught the chief guard’s eye. “I say I break three of his bones before he gives up.”

24

The cargo skimmer swung around to the north of the TIE ready bunker, then angled in straight toward the building. It did not build up speed; it maintained a rate just over a walking pace.

Wedge, Atril, Falynn, and Face clustered at the bow of the thing, braced for the mild collision to come. “I forgot to ask,” Wedge said. “Have you ever done anything like this before? The surge at the end?”

Falynn grinned. “Sure. Tried it with a canyon jump back home.”

“How’d it turn out?”

“Broken collarbone.”

“Just checking.”

By now, the sensors in the TIE bunker would show the oncoming vehicle. Guards might even be leaving by the south entrance to come around and see what was happening. The timing had to be perfect.

They were thirty meters away, twenty, ten—then they hit the bunker wall, a bump that merely caused them to sway forward, momentarily off balance.

Falynn counted, “Three, two, one—”

The skimmer’s engines whined as they overrevved, and suddenly the craft bounced an extra two meters into the air.

The four jumped forward as they felt the skimmer drop from under them. They landed, awkward, on the bunker roof. Atril immediately twisted and started to fall back into the skimmer, but Wedge and Face caught her flailing arms and tugged her toward them.

Already there were the sounds of oncoming feet. The four flattened themselves as quietly as they could and hugged the roof.

Then there were voices: “You there! What do you think you’re doing?”

“Wait a second. There’s nobody in it.”

“Check under it.”

Laughter. “That’d be funny. Someone being squashed under a skimmer.”

The other voice became resentful. “You just think it’s funny