There was a public cleansing station up the third-from-the-top ring, and they paid for a few seconds beneath it. It wasn’t quite the same as a full wash and laundry, but it did shake away the gross feeling that had followed them during the second lift ride. Then, of course, they found themselves an eatery.

No one was actually hungry, so they were happy enough to settle for a small, plain outdoor place.

“Is it outdoor when…” Jaquan mused, and looked up at the gigantic ceiling that had been built over the canyon.

“Good question,” Kiris replied.

The server brought them each a large mug of soup, then vanished like a ghost. Gaylen sniffed at his, had a small experimental sip, then a slightly more generous one. Then he finally relaxed into his seat.

“Thirteen hours until that meeting,” Gaylen said. “What do you two think?”

“I think not finishing that job in time would be a bit of a problem for us,” Jaquan said. “Not price-on-our-heads bad, but it would damage our credibility in this general area.”

“Still, better than getting caught up in local troubles,” Kiris argued. “The tensions I talked about don’t look any different on this ring. Things are shifting, and no one can be sure about the direction. Uncertainty… it makes a community fragile.”

“And volatile, I know,” Gaylen said. “Hm.”

He turned a little in his chair. He couldn’t see Undertown from the eatery’s seating area, but he could faintly glimpse the lift structure that led there.

“Look, let’s not worry too much,” Jaquan said, and visibly perked up. “What kind of High King of Money Mountain wants to choke offworld trade for a minute longer than necessary?”

“The kind that makes more from controlling planetside businesses,” Gaylen pointed out. He could feel his mood hover above that familiar old dark place. He knew the process well, and he was long since sick of it. With the improvements in his life in recent months he found that he was more likely to plant his feet firmly, resisting that inexplicable urge one felt when standing on the edge of a great height, though it wasn’t a hundred percent ratio.

He sighed irritably and shook his head.

“I don’t want this stuff. Getting caught up in troubles. Having to account for people like Macario and Oleg.”

He looked at Jaquan.

“There was a reason why we got out of the game of working for gangs and crime lords.”

“Many reasons,” his friend said.

“Many reasons, true. But I also want to avoid the new war, and let that whole mess burn out in its time. And that leaves us visiting places like this, where it’s gangs and oligarchs instead of war fleets and orbital fortresses. I just want a damned quiet life.”

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Kiris and Jaquan looked at one another, and Gaylen felt a little bit like the butt of a shared joke.

“Now, Gaylen,” Jaquan said with a small smile on his face. “Be honest with yourself.”

“I think you two are about to be honest on my behalf,” he replied.

“I do enjoy the flying, Gaylen,” Jaquan went on. “All the different places, all the different people. But it’s not something I need in my life. What I need is a few steady friends, and machinery to work on. If I have those things, I can be content wherever. I feel blessed, really, to not be hung up on a thousand different desires. You make things a bit harder for yourself, like most people do. But you could be doing something else. We have our own ship, after all. We could go anywhere. Not the Old Kingdom or the Federation…”

He pointed from Kiris to Gaylen. In the former she would be a slave, and in the latter he remained wanted by the law.

“... but there are other things a man with piloting credentials could be doing. Like Kiris said on Nokior, it’s the three of us. Herdis will be going back home soon, Ayna said she’d probably come back, but who knows, and Bers is… Bers.”

“I feel, ever more, that he is looking for a death in battle,” Kiris said, looking distant for a moment.

“Right. But all that aside, there are places one could go, and be relatively safe from any large-scale conflicts, or lawless chaos. And yet here we are, still on the outer lanes, running freight. You don’t look for trouble, Gaylen. But you don’t look for boredom either.”

Jaquan was finished making his point. Gaylen knew him well enough to tell. He looked over to Kiris, to find a slightly mischievous smile on her face.

“Do I need to say anything?” the Chanei asked.

“Do you want to?” he asked.

She just smiled some more.

“Alright, fine,” he said to them. “I’ll try to grumble less.”

They finished their soup in comfortable silence. Jaquan then promptly stood up.

“Well… I’m going to take a solo stroll around. See the sights. See the people. See if they’ve got any interesting parts for sale.”

“Call if anything noteworthy happens,” Gaylen told him.

“As always. Have fun, you two.”

He left, and soon vanished around the curve of the circle.

Gaylen turned to Kiris.

“So…” he said, and gave her a long look as his mind shifted into a very different mode.

“So,” she said back, and relaxed in her seat in that very particular way. When she did it, the defences she kept up against the rest of the universe fell away, she softened up, and focused entirely on him. He’d been getting to know this side of her recently, and he felt deeply privileged for it.

“I can’t think of anything pressing that needs to be done,” Kiris went on.

It was amazing what she could do with a simple head-tilt.

“Can you? Sir?”

She dragged that little word out just enough, with that barely detectable hiss that hit his buttons so hard. Of course it did. She could read him like an instruction manual.

He feigned casualness, leaned back in his chair, and kept her waiting for a few seconds before replying.

“I can, actually.”

“What are you thinking?” she asked softly.

“I am thinking… of a hotel room. A decent, clean one. And you are going to dance for me. All slow and sensual. Until I tell you to stop. And then… I’m going to tie your limbs to the posts, and have some real fun.”

Kiris grinned.

“Sounds good.”