Free Slip Point by Karalynn Lee

Speaker’s daughter’s condition?” Shayalin asked.
    Keaton shook her head. “Not yet. Pilot Dietrich’s briefing was…well, brief. But it sounded more like I’m a safeguard.”
    Shayalin didn’t press further. If her ship needed any specialized medical equipment, the premier would have ensured she acquired it and Keaton wouldn’t be so blasé about the infirmary’s sparseness. Pirates tended toward trauma injuries rather than exotic diseases, so they were at least covered if the girl turned out to need a wound sutured or a bone reset.
    She showed Keaton the rest of the ship so the doctor could find her way to the bridge, the shuttle bay, the engine room—the last so she would know to avoid it. Tansor, her engineer, would never forgive her otherwise.
    “Now let’s get you to your cabin,” Shayalin said. She tried not to bristle at the relieved expression that passed over Keaton’s face. Not everyone was as enamored of her ship as she was. She took the doctor to Apris’s room, since he was the neatest of the crew. “We’re not exactly a luxury cruiser, so you’ll have to borrow someone else’s cabin.”
    Keaton winced as she took in the small space but managed a smile and thanked her anyway.
    When the door slid closed, Shayalin looked around the Adannaya ’s less-than-gleaming surfaces and fought the urge to engage in some last-minute cleaning before Jayce showed up. He already thought the worst of her. Why make it any easier on him?
    And yet even this brief absence from him felt strange, her nerves jangling as though expectant of something.
    When her comm channel chirped and she opened it to hear his crisp, “On approach,” she went from pacing to hitting the dock ramp control and dashing back to the enclosed deck above the hangar.
    Jayce taxied the Swallow in slowly and carefully, without any of the flourishes most Swallow pilots were prone to. Its tail stopped just short of the far wall. She hit the panel to pull in the ramp. It slid upward to close the hangar.
    The Swallow barely fit. Jayce watched the ramp shut with a handspan to spare and climbed out to meet Shayalin with a look of visible relief.
    She pulled out the cables that would hold the Swallow in place, and Jayce helped her set the magnetic clamps. “She’s a beauty,” she said, admiring the sleek lines.
    “Don’t know what I’d do if you scratched it,” he said. “A year of my salary probably wouldn’t cover repairs.”
    “Whether it got scratched depended on how well you fit in it,” she pointed out. “I’m sure the premier did his research on what type of ship I had before he pulled me into this.”
    He looked about the Adannaya a bit bemusedly. “You don’t strike me as an Aequitus type,” he said.
    “I’m rather fond of them. They hold up better than you think.” She’d gone through a phase where she wanted the newest ship model, or anything she hadn’t flown before, but she bored of them quickly. She’d never forgotten how the Alioqui had taken her away from Centuris for good, though. It was why she chose an Aequitus as her first ship to steal, and never sold or traded it throughout her subsequent infidelities. In the end, she’d settled upon it as her final choice. “It doesn’t surprise me you went for something fast. You were always a speed demon.”
    “Everyone becomes a speed demon once they’ve tried flying a Swallow. They’re so responsive to the lightest touch, and nothing else in space can catch you.”
    “Sure, rub it in when I’m about to launch this clunky lady,” she said, leading him to the bridge.
    But she settled herself into the pilot’s chair with the usual easy affection she felt for her ship. The Adannaya couldn’t sing through space like a Swallow, but she knew exactly how far she could push her. She signaled her intent to vacate the dock, received an acknowledgment and pulled out smoothly. It was a pleasure to be handling her own ship again. She occasionally took her turn at it,