Free Privateer Tales 3: Parley by Jamie McFarlane

it?”
    “No, you’re plenty tough. It’s not that.”
    “Then what?”             
    “I like you Ada. I don’t want to see you get hurt.” It didn’t come out the way I wanted it to.
    “Liam, I understand the risk, but I want to do something that matters. And I don’t think about you that way.”
    Oh crap, I’d really messed this up. “No, I didn’t mean that.”
    “What, so you don’t like me?”
    “No. I mean yes. But not that way.”
    “So do you or don’t you?”
    “What? Like you?” I felt like a fighter who’d taken one too many punches in a fight.
    “No, need a captain for the freighter?”
    “Yes, of course we do.”
    “Good then, it’s settled. Wake me up when we’re a thousand kilos from the dock.” She pulled herself out of the chair and slid down the ladder.

TIME TO GET BUSY
     
    “Look Captain, we need to get this resolved. I feel like you’re stonewalling me,” Qiu Loo said.
    “Have you spent much time on a mining colony? If we show up there with a half loaded ship and no contract to haul ore, we’re going to draw a lot of unwanted attention. I’ll get a load put together, but it takes work.”
    “I still don’t feel you’re prioritizing this mission, Captain.”
    “Let’s be clear, Lieutenant. I don’t know what this mission is, other than dropping you off.”
    “Is that why you’re dragging your heels? You’re miffed about not being read in?”
    “Not fair, Qiu. I’m not dragging my heels. You’re definitely holding back on us though. If all you want is a taxi, then there are a hundred cheaper ways to get that done. You asked us, remember?”
    “This discussion isn’t productive.”
    “Agreed. We’ll have the Adela Chen docked by 1500 and then Nick and I have some things to get through. How about you and I sit down with Nick after that and we can talk about schedule and expectations?”
    “I’d like that,” she said.
    “Hoffen out.” I terminated the comm. Damn, but she was exhausting.
    We were about twenty thousand kilometers from Mars. One of the great features of the Fujitsu tug we were flying was the ability to change the orientation of the cockpit by rotating around the ladder opening. For the final two hundred thousand kilometers I’d swiveled around so I could catch the first view of Mars. The glow from around the engines was so bright that it wasn’t until we were within fifty thousand kilometers that I was finally able to make it out.
    The scale of a planet is hard to understand if you’re from one of the colonies. As we approached Mars, it just kept growing. Precast Products' refining platform orbited Mars at eight hundred kilometers. At that distance, the planet would likely fill my entire view from the cockpit.
    I slid down the ladder and knocked on the bunk room door. “Ada, we’re getting pretty close, you want to come up?”
    She opened the door. “I’ll be right there. I was thinking, once we unload the string, you could use our slip on Puskar Stellar’s orbital station. It’s not big enough for both ships but you could leave the freighter there until we take off again.”
    “Are you sure you still want to come?”
    “Yes. Are you sure you want to have this conversation?”
    I knew when to let it go. “Nope. See you topside.”
    After a few minutes, Ada slipped into the other pilot’s chair.
    “Oh, good, you rotated the cockpit. We’ll slide in like this at Precast,” she said.
    “I’m going to tell Nick to meet us at your dock at Puskar. Do they have any public slips?”
    “Yes, loads of them. I’ll send him the info.” Ada shot a message over to him from her reading pad. Less than twenty seconds later she announced, “That was fast, he already responded and said they’d meet us there.”
    “That’s Nick all right.”
    We both watched as Sterra's Gift cut across our field of vision, accelerating toward their destination.
    “Time to get busy,” Ada said.
    “Pardon?” I had a dumb smirk on my