Free Forgotten Suns by Judith Tarr

Psycorps’ internal
security. A voice pulled her out just before it swallowed her whole. “Have you
seen a pink tesser-bag? Sera Lopakhina will die, simply die, if she can’t find
it.”
    Khalida blinked stupidly at Rama. The weblink had cut off.
He was smiling at her, completely oblivious. She pointed at the object he was
looking for, which glowed pinkly under the auxiliary console.
    It was amazingly pink. He fished it out and held it
gingerly, regarding it with a kind of horrified amusement. “I don’t think I’ve
ever seen that color before. Does she really keep all her baggage in here?”
    “Wait till you see what comes out of it,” Khalida said. Her
focus was coming back, along with some minimally useful fraction of her
intelligence. “We caught a thief once who had stowed a whole shuttle in one of
these, complete with cargo.”
    “Was it pink?”
    “God, no,” she said. “That would have taken hiding in plain
sight to a whole new level.”
    So, she realized, had he. His accent, his expression, his
whole tone and presence, had changed in ways she would never have expected.
While she digested that, he tucked the bag under his arm, saluted her with a
fair imitation of a Spaceforce snap, and sauntered off the bridge.
    She stayed until the pilot finally remembered to come back.
Her mind chewed over and over what she had stumbled across while she searched
for something else. It was a file label, to which a file should have been
attached, but the alarms had triggered before it could download. All she had
was the file name, Araceli , and the
designation, Operation Incomplete.
    She was not quite crazy enough to reactivate the search. She
had covered her trail just well enough this time, thanks to pure chance. If she
tried it again this soon, she might not be so lucky.
    ~~~
    Dinner that night was a mob. They ate on the roof, where
there was table space enough for them all; the Brats, who had done most of the
cooking, played host until Marina chased them off to bed. Their protests had
the air of a formality: they were worn out.
    “I see they didn’t blow up the planet,” Rashid said long
after dark. The tourists had been herded to their tents, and the staff and
students were either asleep in their cabins or snoring under the table. Rashid
and Khalida and Marina sat together under the moon, finishing off the last of
the coffee.
    Khalida blatantly and selfishly emptied the pot. “You’ve
been gorging on it for tendays. I haven’t even seen real coffee since before
you left.”
    “This time we brought enough to last us,” said Marina.
    “We’d have had enough last time if it hadn’t been for
greedyguts here,” Rashid said, grinning at Khalida.
    She bared her teeth in return, and paused for a long,
bitter-blissful sip. When she came up for air, her brother went back to what he
had been talking about before. “So you kept Aisha away from the explosives and
Jamal from hacking into Spaceforce Central. I salute you.”
    “They found other things to get into,” Khalida said.
    “Less destructive, at least,” said Marina. She stretched and
yawned, looking no older than her daughter, and not much larger, either; but
the glance she darted at Khalida was wickedly sharp. “How long did you say the
antelope have been in the paddock?”
    “Three tendays now,” Khalida said. “Almost four.”
    “And they’ve never even tried to take the wall down?” Marina
shook her head in wonder. “Who would have thought it?”
    “Vikram says we’re not to blame the Brats for that,” said
Rashid. “That’s his new assistant’s project.”
    “It is,” Khalida said.
    “Vikram never mentioned that he felt overworked,” Rashid
said.
    “He doesn’t,” said Khalida. “But when your old shipmate’s
offspring shows up looking for a berth, what do you do?”
    “Yes,” said Rashid. “What do you do?”
    Khalida knew what he was waiting for. She gave it to him. “He’s
clean. No civil or criminal complaints anywhere