“It’s only a surface scratch,” Bott said, swiveling the captain’s chair left and right. “I can fix it myself.”
“Don’t you touch my ship!” Nubry shouted. The librarian strode halfway across the Drover’s bridge and back, shaking both fists above her head. Bott noticed the dark spots under her arms again. “Just leave it alone!”
“Some pirates ought to be ashamed of themselves,” said a voice from the ceiling.
“Ship,” said Bott. “Shut up.”
“Don’t change the subject!” Nubry stamped one foot on the sleek, elegant deck. “I’ve dodged enemy fire hundreds of times! I have!”
“I said I was sorry.” Bott hunched his shoulders a bit. “It was just…your ship….”
“Oh, yes!” Nubry stalked back the way she’d come, one of her fists knocking the ball of hair off-center. “My ship! If you’d thought of that sooner, I could have flown it out without it getting damaged. I could!”
She spun around and came back. Bott shrank into his chair as her face came forward and she actually growled at him. He was, he knew, absolutely in the wrong. You did not take command of an ally’s vessel without a word, not as long as the other captain was capable of doing the job herself. He wasn’t sure that Nubry could have done the job, but anyone who cared this much about her ship was probably pilot enough to have made it out. Unless it was the risk to her cargo that upset het; he had known captains like that. But she’d been going on about “my ship”, so it was probably….
Nubry turned her back on him and stamped that foot again. “What were you thinking? WERE you thinking?”
“I warned you he was a pirate.”
“Ship,” said Bott, summoning an air of menace.
“Yes!” Nubry’s fists were banging together in front of her when she turned around. “You were planning to steal command from me from the very start, just like…like a pirate!”
“{orates will be pirates,” said the ship. “They may be all right in their place: a dungeon, say, or….”
Neither Bott nor Nubry was really listening. “Even down in the Deaccession Chamber!” said the librarian. “You had to come down shooting things up, as if nobody else would know what to do!”
Bott was on firmer ground here. “You could NOT have rammed through the doors. At that temperature, the skin of a BBB-44 would have peeled off like a roast lumpuck!”
Her thumbs slid across her fists. She viewed him through narrow eyes, and tossed her head. “I think I know more about my ship than you do. For all you knew, we have special shielding for that!”
“Oh yes,” Bott snorted. “A library ship.”
The fists were shaken at him. “Yes! A library ship, you raggy little-bitty pirate!”
She strode eight steps away and turned to face him. “And….” Her mouth opened wider, emitting no further words, and then snapped shut.
Her fists fell apart into fingers. She took a half step forward. “I shouldn’t have said that. I…I must suppose that your height is completely normal on your planet. I’m….”
Bott’s chin went up and slightly to the left. “No. My father was a foot taller than I am.”
“It’s just that….” One hand went up the ball of hair; one foot went out to kick the navigator’s chair. Her mouth tightened. “You shouldn’t have done it.”
“A;; right,” said Bott.. “I shouldn’t have done it.” He turned the captain’s seat yo face the main screen. “Ship, where is the Rhododendron now?”
A voice behind him went on, “I mean, I’m the last of the Dangerous Rebels and the Dragonshelf is their last ship. It’s up to me to be caretaker.”
Bott bent over the console as if studying the lighted tabs. Where could he take the Drover now? Did it matter? At the moment, nothing seemed especially real except the overheated librarian behind him. He sat back in the chair, wincing as he hit the uncushioned back of the chair.
“Ship,” he snapped. “I asked for the location of the Rhododendron!”
He reached for his command cards but bounced forward as something was jammed in behind him. Looking back, he found the librarian retreating, arms folded, watching to see if he threw back the cushion she’d just returned to him.
Bott said nothing, his eyes on her. She turned an alarming shade of orange.
Her voice, though, was low and calm. “You went into the Deaccession Chamber and risked your life got out books.” She raised her prayerstone to her forehead. “It doesn’t matter whether I could have gotten out by myself. What matters is that we DID get out, and you risked your life making sure we did.” She closed her eyes. “Thank you.”
Bott shook his head. “I shouldn’t have taken command of your ship without your leave. It was just that…it’s been so long since I was on a ship I could really captain.”
He waved a hand around the vast array of lighted tabs and switches. “This is all really too much for me.”
Her eyes were still closed. Bott tipped his head back and called, “Did you hear that, slave ship?”
“Hear it? Lummox, I recorded it.”
“But I’ll figure it out,” the captain snarled. “I can fly any ship when I’m sober and I haven’t had a drink in three days!”
If the ship had a comeback for that, Nubry covered it, stepping forward, eyes open. “I understand. Do I? Yes, I do! I’ve been in charge of the Dragonshelf forever, I think sometimes, without any crew. So I never had to think about what anyone else would do. I just do the best I can.”
She let the prayerstone drop, and folded her fingers over it. “And you fly very well. I’ve been hit worse than that scratch. Sometimes.”
Bott rose from his chair as she came forward. “They say you should never have two captains on the same bridge,” he told her.
Her head bobbed fiercely. “We can take turns. We can go….”
Bott’s hands were up to take hers, but she raised her eyes and frowned past him. “Where ARE we going?” she asked. “Right now?”
Bott shrugged. “I just put in a general course away from the Library Planet. I hadn’t decided where to go yet.”
Her frown came to his face and then turned back to the monitors. “We certainly seem to be going someplace.”
Bott turned to a navigational screen. They DID seem to be going somewhere, and picking up speed in the process. His own course showed on the screen as a thing red line. The dot representing the Drover was mbing farther and farther from that line.
The second it took him to comprehend this meant it took one more second before he realized the lights on his chair console were blinking off, one by one.
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