A kushiban peeked into the galley, stepping softly.
"Sir," the navigator addressed him officially, "senior planetologist Kale needs to contact her superiors and transmit information."
Dey was immensely grateful to the "typokot" for the timely intrusion. Because for a moment, pain tore the world around her. Yes, KIK needed to know what happened to her people and her ship.
"And can you establish a connection, sir?" the planetologist asked the kushiban.
"My name is Bus, ma'am, I'm the senior assistant," the kushiban politely informed her. "Please follow me."
Puffing out his tail, he headed for the mess hall, where he turned on the holotable.
"The connection is at your disposal."
"Thank you, Bus."
Dey sat down in a chair and habitually dialed the service director's code.
The Chief's face, usually impassive, now looked somewhat surprised.
"Dey? You're alive?"
"As you can see. But the guys... no. Pirates," the words fell in short, choppy phrases.
"The materials?" her interlocutor asked.
"With me," Dey replied just as dryly.
"Let them stay with you for now," the Chief decided after a short pause.
"By the way. I suspect the pirates were led to us. They appeared too quickly. And someone from our side clearly betrayed us," she shared her concerns.
"Alright, Dey, I'll think about it," her boss promised.
"Think. We don't have many people to spare."
And Dey pressed the disconnect button.
"It seems I'm not ready to tell him where I am," she said quietly, looking at the kushiban. "Not ready to tell anyone until it's clear what's behind it."
"Then we'll wait for the captain's decision," the alien flowed to the floor. "And we'll get back to breakfast."
Dey nodded grimly. "It seems so. Until we find the traitor, it's better for me to be listed as missing. Tell that to the navigator."
And she smiled. "Well, things are clearer now, so we can finish breakfast."
"You know," Sher said thoughtfully, who had only been silent and listening all this time until Dey left. "At first, I had an unpleasant feeling after the destruction... of the target," she stumbled on the definition. "But now, after Dey's story, it's gone."
"It still affected you," Nick sighed, taking her hand again. "The gifted feel the death of others, Sher... Very acutely. I was afraid it would reach you through me too. I closed myself off, but I couldn't completely shield you. Sorry. And the pirates... They got what they deserved."
Sher's slender fingers responded with a weak squeeze.
"Oh, Nick," her voice enveloped him with tenderness. "It's not through you. As a doctor, I'm supposed to fight against death by definition. And here... That's why I felt a little uneasy at first. But they were playing on her side," Sher said quietly.
The silence that hung after her words and the shadow that enveloped the galley space wanted to be dispelled by something. An unexpected and brilliant thought came. With a mischievous glint in her eyes, like a teenager, Sher ruffled Nick's hair, which he had so carefully smoothed...
"A disaster," the navigator sighed, starting to eat. "The end of my stern reputation!"
His eyes were laughing.
Dey returned to the galley and found a surprisingly touching scene. Sher was ruffling the navigator's hair, and he was smiling at her warmly and sunnily. "I'm on time, as always," she thought with annoyance, and said aloud:
"Excuse me, but I'm terribly hungry, it turns out."
She sat in her place and, trying to look decent, buried her face in her plate.
"A... And maybe I should heat it up more, after all?" Sher asked, embarrassed, moving her hand under the table.
"Thank you, no need, I don't like hot food," Dey smiled, but immediately became serious, turning her gaze to the navigator. "Sir, I have reason to believe that I remain a dangerous cargo. Those pirates were unlikely to be alone..."
Under the table, the doctor's hand was instantly captured. With the most unruffled look, eating breakfast, the navigator shrugged.
"Let them find us first, and then we'll see whose caliber is thicker."
It was easy to surrender to such captivity, offering no resistance. Sher didn't resist either, remaining silent, trying not to betray her feelings in any way, and twirled her glass of caf with her other hand, forgetting to take a sip.
Dey bent over her plate again, hiding a smile. These two were so touchingly beautiful that a smile involuntarily appeared on her lips next to them. Dey was mentally happy for her peer, which, however, did not prevent her from thinking about who in KIK knew when and how the detachment would return home. The plate was emptied somehow unnoticed.
"Sher, thank you for your care, the breakfast is simply superb."
"I completely agree," Nick suddenly fell silent, listening to something. "Sher, I'll need help in the cockpit. Dey, I'll leave you with the senior assistant, rest."
He rose abruptly from the table.
"Absolutely not for anything, Dey. And I won't be able to pass on your praise to the authors of this culinary masterpiece. They remained..." Sher smiled weakly. "In short, they remained far away."
She didn't want to scare Dey with the origin of these dishes. Nar Shaddaa was unlikely to complain about a lack of fame. And did Dey need to know that they had visited the Moon?
"I think the menu will be more like home-cooked food soon, when we replenish our supplies with what we can cook ourselves."
With these words, she hastily slipped from her seat.
"And excuse me, Dey, I'll have to leave you, rest, we'll have more time to chat," she smiled a little guiltily and turned to the navigator. Addressing him as "Sir" after Dey had seen what she allowed herself would be, at the very least, strange. Therefore, she said only one thing:
"I'm coming."
Dey smiled at Bus.
"Well, everyone's scattered. Are you hungry? There's another portion here."
The kushiban smiled, showing an excellent set of teeth.
"I'm not hungry, ma'am. And I'm a vegetarian."
Dey was genuinely embarrassed. She was afraid of offending the "typokot" because she liked him very much for his "fluidity," wisdom, and something else she couldn't yet name, and also Kale constantly fought the temptation to pet this amazing creature.
"Excuse me," she mumbled. "Would it be very tactless if I asked you to tell me about yourself? It so happened that I haven't had the chance to meet anyone like you." Dey tilted her head and spread her hands in repentance.
"We don't often venture out into the outside world," Bus carefully folded his ears back. "So it's not surprising. As for me... One tail, two ears, four paws, many possibilities, and boundless initiative. They say it's a terrible combination... But my race is not aggressive, we only need claws and teeth for defense. We love art, handicrafts... In short, a people like which there are millions in the Galaxy."
"Are you young or... And what kind of handicrafts specifically?" the conversation became more interesting.
Bus puffed up and looked like a furry balloon.
"I'm an adult," he replied. "But not old. And handicrafts... For example, our handmade fabrics are better than any artificial ones. Warm and light at the same time."
Dey was already preparing to sit on her hands, because the temptation to pet her interlocutor had become unbearable. And she sincerely added:
"You are very beautiful. I don't know if it's customary for you to say that, and I apologize in advance."
"Thank you," Bus thanked her. "Unfortunately, I have no one to compare myself to. Since I was stolen by traders when I was still a child, I haven't seen a single compatriot."
"I'm sorry..." Dey wanted to catch those traders and do something bad to them, and losing control of herself, she gently petted the kushiban.
Bus did not object to such a violation of subordination.
"Your turn to tell," a long ear perked up expectantly.
The planetologist sighed. "And what is there to tell? I'm an ordinary person, I've worked for KIK all my life, I have two children," at this moment she seemed to turn to stone. "Bus, you see, the children also don't know that I'm alive!"
"I think your chief will tell them," the alien flowed out from under her hand. "If you've eaten, I'll escort you to your cabin so you can rest. And you can write to them. Only, please, no mention of where exactly you are."
"Of course," Dey nodded. "I don't want to bring trouble upon them. Let's go," Dey got up. "I think I really am tired."
The kushiban escorted her to the cabin door – not a useless precaution on an unfamiliar ship – wished her a pleasant rest and left, puffing out his tail.
...Alone, Dey locked the cabin door and decided to unpack her bag. Out of habit, she brought the bag to the bed, unfastened the locks, and gasped. She remembered how they had cleaned this sample, how they had found the intergrowth of diamond and medcrystal, but she was sure that the sample had remained on the ship, in Ala's safe container, the party chief.
She covered her face with her hands and gave in to tears. They all appeared before her mind's eye. The stern, weathered captain, the cheerful first mate, the planetologist colleagues, mature and very young... They called her "our lucky one" because either some inner intuition or simply knowledge helped her find first the placers, and then the lodes, which QR-7600 turned out to be so rich in... Obeying some unclear desire, Kale took out the deck and began to review the holophotos of everyone who had been with her on this route. Nick said that no one was left alive. The route turned out to be the last. Except for her, the only woman on board...
Her tears dried. Dey took a wet wipe from her bag and wiped her face.
"Who needed us not to return?" she thought. "The most would have benefited from our disappearance would have been Retz – the Chief's deputy, because for the loss of the party and the ship, he could be sent into retirement, or even fired without severance pay, and Retz insisted so much on the exact observance of the return route..."
After recording her suspicions in the deck, she wrote letters to her children, as always quickly and briefly. "Alive, I love you, I'll contact you at the first opportunity."
When Dey calmed down a little, there was a delicate knock at the door, and the familiar head with long ears appeared in the doorway. "May I come in?"
"Of course," she smiled sincerely at the kushiban. And added anxiously: "Did something happen?"
"No, nothing that would require an urgent consultation with a planetologist," Bus joked, carefully not noticing the traces of tears. "My partner is asleep, and the others too, and you're not asleep yet. I thought you might not mind some company. But if you want to sleep, I'll leave."
"No, please don't leave!" Dey almost begged, it was so unbearable to be alone again. And for some reason, she added in a whisper: "To be honest, I want something to drink and eat."
"For food – that's to the galley."
The kushiban glanced into the corridor.
"If you want, I'll escort you there. I can't bring it myself, and we don't have a cart yet."
"You know, at home," her voice trembled traitorously, because Dey clearly understood that she didn't have a home at the moment, "the best conversations happened at the table. And I still don't know how to eat alone. No matter how funny it is."
Dey didn't understand why she was so frank with a barely familiar creature, but he seemed so dear and close to her that in his presence, for some reason, she began to feel that everything would be alright.
"Will you join me?" she asked aloud.
"Gladly," Bus turned and scurried silently to the elevator. "Is this a tradition of your planet, or a family custom?"
"Most likely, family... On Corellia, everyone is very different, and customs vary in each family."
"How interesting," a long ear stood up. "I remember almost nothing about my family. Maybe we had our own traditions too... You've given me an interesting thought."
"Share it?" Dey asked. "Or is it too personal?"
"A thought?" Bus looked back. "No, nothing so personal. I thought about trying to find my relatives. Of course, a lot of time has passed, but... What if I get lucky?"
"And can I help you with that?" she remembered too well how dreary it was within the walls of the orphanage, and it seemed that poor Bus had it a thousand times more dreary, and she really wanted to help him.
The galley was empty and quiet. The kushiban jumped onto the table, looked into the cabinets, then into the refrigerator. "There are a few ready-made meals here, they just need to be heated," he moved to a chair. "I myself don't know yet if I really want to look for anyone. At first, I counted the days, hoping they would find me. Then I stopped hoping..."
Dey carefully approached the kushiban and very gently petted his paw.
"I'm sorry, please, I didn't want to upset you," she said quietly, fighting back tears. "I also stopped hoping once. And on the other hand, you are young, maybe they are still waiting for you there," and she gently touched Bus again.
"I'm not upset," the alien waved his tail, but didn't remove his paw. "It's not a painful topic anymore. I just came to the conclusion that if they wanted to, they would have found me. So, either they didn't want to, or there was no one to look for. Maybe I was wrong, but in any case, it's not something to be upset about."
Dey petted the senior assistant's paw again. And decided, as in her distant student days, to smooth things over.
"It's so interesting with you," she said quietly. "Can I ask one more thing? What do you like to eat?"
"Fruits and greens," the kushiban twitched his ears. "And also flower petals, that's not food, of course, it's a treat..."
On his expressive muzzle, embarrassment appeared, his fluffy fur turned a pinkish hue.
Dey, who was openly admiring the kushiban, suddenly wanted to bring this amazing creature a huge basket of what he loved. Because you really want to feed and pet such beings. Feed and pet.
"Excuse me if I'm intruding, okay?" asked the very curious planetologist. "And what is your race called?"
"I'm a kushiban," Bus explained. "We have a peaceful planet, backward by Imperial standards. But no environmental problems."
Inwardly, the woman rejoiced: finally, the "typokot" had a normal name.
"And is it realistic to get to your homeland?"
"Of course," the alien was surprised. "Ships don't go often, but they do. Mostly traders, tourists find it boring with us."
"You said you were kidnapped when you were very young, but you remember so much... Human children usually don't remember their childhood very well. Is it different for you? Or am I mistaken?" Dey petted Bus's paw again, which had not been removed. "Excuse me, sometimes I'm disgustingly curious. A scientist is a diagnosis," and the planetologist smiled shyly.
"Actually, I don't remember that much," Bus confessed, letting his ears droop. "I just read... Larius taught me, and at first, I just read voraciously."
"Imagine that, when I ended up in the orphanage, I also read voraciously," Dey smiled. "It wasn't so dreary then."
And she sighed.
Bus had no way of knowing that the first year in the orphanage was terribly difficult for Dey, because she felt like the world had collapsed: her mother was gone, and her father had gotten rid of her like useless junk. And salvation came from the library, which, in addition to technical, i.e., useful literature, had a lot of fiction. Much later, Dey realized that she had remained sane to a considerable extent thanks to reading.
Bus didn't move, but for a moment, the planetologist had the feeling that somewhere inside, a warm, fluffy kitten stirred.
"Excuse me, ma'am, I have to run," the kushiban suddenly perked up his ears and tensed, instantly transforming from a furry ball into a swift, graceful beast. "The captain needs me." His long tail waved at the door, and Dey was left alone in the galley.
Dey finished her caf and, in a somewhat elevated, warm mood, stared at the ceiling. The kitten inside refused to disappear. It was also glowing. For some reason, orange.