Sudden fear clutched at his throat, his heart going a million beats per second. She can't mean to ram. Alex froze, his hands clutching the armrests.
At the last minute, Tia rolled her nose up, hitting the crest of the hill with her landing gear instead of her nose.
The shriek and crunch of agonized metal told Alex that they were not going to make port anywhere but a space station now. The impact rammed him back into his chair, the lights flickered and went out, and crash systems deployed, cushioning him from worse shock. Even so, he blacked out for a moment.
When he came to again, the lights were back on, and Tia hovered, tilted slightly askew, above the alien city.
Below and to their right was what was left of the roofless building, now buried beneath a pile of ice, earth, and rock.
"Are you all right?" he managed, though it hurt to move his jaw.
"Space-worthy," she said, and there was no mistaking the shakiness in her voice. "Barely. I'll be as leaky as a sieve in anything but the main cabin and the passenger section, though. And I don't know about my drives, hang on, we're being hailed."
The screen flickered and filled with the image of Neil, with Chria Chance in the background. "AH One-Oh-Three-Three, is that you? I assume you had a good reason for playing 'chicken' with a mountain?"
"It's us," Alex replied, feeling all of his energy drain out as his adrenaline level dropped. "There's another one of your playmates under that rockpile."
"Ah." Neil said nothing more, simply nodded. "All's well then. Can you come up to us?"
"We aren't going to be making any landings," Tia pointed out. "But I don't know about the state of our drives."
Chria leaned over her partner's shoulder. "I wouldn't trust them if I were you," she said. "But if you get up here, we can take you in tow and hold you in orbit until one of the transports shows up. Then you ride home in their bay."
"It's a deal," Alex told her, then, with a lift of an eyebrow, "I didn't know you could do that"
"There's a lot you don't know," she told him. "Is that all right with you, Tia?"
"At this point, just about anything would be all right with me," she replied. "We're on the way."
Tia was still a little dizzy from the call she'd gotten from the Institute. When you're refitted, we'd like you to take the first Team into what we think is the EsKay homeworld. You and Alexander have the most experience, in situations where plague is a possibility, of any other courier on contract to us. It had only made sense; to this day no one knew what had paralyzed her. She had a vested interest in making sure the team stayed healthy, and an even bigger one in helping to find the bug.
Of course, they knew that. And they knew she would never buy out her contract until this assignment was over. Blackmail? Assuredly. But it was a form of blackmail she could live with.
Besides, if her plan worked, she would soon be digging with the Prime Team, not just watching them. It might take a while, but sooner or later, she'd have enough money made from her investments.
Once she paid for the repairs, that is. From the remarks of the techs working on her hull, they would not be cheap.
Then Stirling stunned her again, presenting her with the figures in her account.
"So, my dear lady," said Stirling, "between an unspecified reward from the Drug Enforcement Arm, the bonus for decoding the purpose of the EsKay navbook, the fine return from your last investment, and the finders' fee for that impressive treasure trove, you are quite a wealthy shell-person."
"So I see," Tia replied, more than a little dazed. "But what about the bill for repairs?"
"Covered by CenSec." Stirling wasn't precisely gloating, but he was certainly enjoying himself. "And if you don't mind my saying so, that was my work. I merely repeated what you had told me about the situation, pointed out that your damages were due entirely to a civilian aiding in the apprehension of dangerous criminals, and CenSec seemed positively eager to have the bills transferred over. When I mentioned how you had kept their ship from ambush from the ground, they decided you needed that Singularity Drive you've always wanted."
She suspected he had done more than merely mention it... perhaps she ought to see if she could get Lee Stirling as her Advocate, instead of the softperson she had, who had done nothing about the repairs or the drive! So, she would not have to spend a single penny of all those bonuses on her own repairs! "What about my investments in the prosthetics firm? And what if I take my bonus money and plow it back into Moto-Prosthetics?"
"Doing brilliantly. And if you do that, hmm, do you realize you'll have a controlling interest?" Stirling sounded quite amazed. "Is this something you wanted? You could buy out your contract with all this. Or get yourself an entire new refit internally and externally."