Liz punched the third button from the top in the fourth column from the right, which probably said "tea" as plain as the nose on your face, if your nose happened to be Liaden. Since hers wasn't, she'd memorized which buttons Nova pressed to draw what kind of rations.
She fished the cup out of the dispenser and punched the button again, then walked both cups carefully down the narrow hallway to the piloting chamber. They were due to fall out of Jump pretty soon—a way stop, not Lytaxin itself.
Nova was at the board, which was where Nova mostly was, except for an odd hour of sleep, or a short stroll down to the canteen to draw tea or food—that she ate and drank while sitting watch over her board.
"Here you go, Goldie." Liz slid one cup into the holder of the arm of the pilot's chair, and, juggling the other cup, got herself into the cramped co-pilot's seat.
"My thanks," Nova said absently, busy with some figuring on a tiny work screen set off to the side of the main board.
"No problem," Liz said, anchoring her cup and pulling the webbing across. Not that Nova was likely to give them a thrill breaking Jump—she'd shown herself far too able a pilot for that. But, in Liz's experience, accidents did happen, and the ones who were prepared were the ones least likely to get hurt.
"Planning on making a long stop?" she asked. "Or just using the revolving door?"
Nova looked up, golden brows pulled tight. "Revolving-?" The frown cleared in the next instant. "Ah. I see. We shall pause long enough to hear the news, then move on. If the luck smiles, we will be dining with Erob twenty hours hence."
"Terrific," Liz said, without emphasis. She had a careful sip of her tea. "You got a pretty good handle on Terran," she said. "Haven't managed to really stump you yet."
"Were you trying?" Astonishingly, Nova looked amused. "But you might consider my handle to be not quite what it should be, when you learn that my mother was Terran."
Liz managed not to choke on her tea. "She was?"
"Indeed, and a scholar of linguistics besides." There was a muted chime in the cabin and Nova turned back to the screens.
"You will excuse me. We approach Jump end."
Liz settled her cup in the slot and eased back as well as she could in the chair, so of course they phased into normal space with no more happenstance than the usual snap of transition.
Nova was busy with the board. Liz picked up the plug she'd been given, as she thought, to keep her quiet during just such periods of pilot concentration, she slipped it in her ear, doodling with the one dial of the dozens decorating the board that she was allowed, even encouraged, to touch.
For a while there was nothing much. The usual traffic talk and between—ship chatter you'd get any time you broke system. Then there was something else. Liz froze, holding the setting steady, and pulled the plug out of her ear.
"Nova."
A flash of violet eyes none too pleased. Liz held out the earplug.
"Gotta hear this. Priority One. I picked it up on the shipping channel."
One slim hand moved, sideways to what it had been doing, slapped a toggle and the speaker came live.
"Repeat. All vessels shipping to or through Lytaxin space are warned that Clan Danut is invoking the war-impaired shipping clause of all contracts and will not carry, deliver, or receive goods bound for Lytaxin, based on reliable information. This by order of Delm Danut."
In the pilot's chair, Nova took a deep quiet breath. Liz looked at her.
"You know them?"
"Clan Danut," Nova said, still staring at the board. "They are a small clan; their principal warehouse is on planet here. If they were not certain, they would not speak." She moved then, hands dancing along the controls.
"We shall check another source, Commander Lizardi, for if one trader announces such news, another has information a little fresher!"
Liz watched as Nova's hands touched this comm-panel and that, heard what might have been a Liaden cuss word as a loud monotone note sounded, then saw hands busy again.
"It would be good of you to fetch more tea for me, and some of the board-biscuits—sixth key on the right side of the warmer."
Liz noted the half-cup of tea still locked to Nova's chair, but figured she could tell when she should be elsewhere for a moment.
As fast as Liz rushed for the vittles, whatever secrets the Liaden woman wanted hidden were still her own when she got back.
"Strap in this time, Commander," said Nova, hands busy on the board yet again. "We Jump as soon as our orientation and speed are correct."
"Whoa!" Liz started to reach out and get hold of a wrist, then thought better of it. "Where you putting out for?"
No answer.
"Answer me, Goldie, I got a right to know."
"Indeed you do," Nova said, her voice a calm and shocking counterpoint to her busy fingers. "We are going to Fendor, Angela Lizardi."
"Merc Headquarters?" She blinked. "What're you gonna do? Hire yourself an army?"
"If necessary. Jump phase in 20 seconds. Erob is Korval's ally. We owe assistance in peril. And I have evidence from a pinbeam bounce that my brother and his lifemate are on Lytaxin as we speak."
Nova turned her violet eyes to Liz. "The mercenaries will have ways of determining if this rumor is true. Am I correct?"
Girl was too damn bright, Liz thought, and sighed.
"Yeah," she said, "they probably do."
"I thought so," said Nova, and the ship snapped into Jump.